Published: March 13, 2019

March 19 Writers at the University Series Features Jonathan Lerner

Novelist Jonathan Lerner, a founding member of the Weather Underground, will present a reading on Tuesday, March 19, as part of the Writers at the University series. The event begins at 7 p.m. on the ninth floor of the Vaughn Center, and is free and open to the public.

Lerner will read from his novel, Swords in the Hands of Children, which a memoir about his youthful radicalism. In his story, Lerner also writes about the counter culture among the group known as the Weather Underground or Weathermen, a radical left-wing domestic terror group active in the 1960s and 1970s which led a series of bombings in the U.S.

Lerner attended Antioch College (Ohio), but left the school to become a full-time activist on the staff of Students for a Democratic Society, the principal organization of the New Left. He was a founding member of the militant Weatherman faction and the editor of its newspaper, Fire!

Lerner remained a member of the Weather Underground while it carried out the campaign of bombings, until its termination in 1976. He is the author of the novels Caught in a Still Peace and Alex Underground, and a journalist reporting on architecture, urbanist and environmental issues.

For more information about this event, contact Lynne Bartis at lbartis@ut.edu.