2024 Update & Fund Drive

Greetings. 2024 is shaping up to be another stellar year for the Norman Mailer Society, but we couldn’t do it without your support. Our commitment to preserving and promoting the legacy of Norman Mailer remains steadfast and enthusiastic. However, we rely heavily on the generosity and support of our esteemed members.

The mission of the Norman Mailer Society is multifaceted: to foster scholarly research and inquiry into the life and works of Norman Mailer, to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among Mailer enthusiasts, and to ensure that Mailer’s literary contributions live on. Achieving these objectives necessitates the collective effort of our members.

It is with this understanding of the indispensability of your support that I write to you today. Your membership not only sustains the Society but also propels our initiatives forward, enabling us to organize conferences, publish The Mailer Review, and support our digital presence. Your involvement ensures that the insights of Norman Mailer continue to inspire and provoke critical discourse in cultural circles worldwide.

Last year, the Society celebrated Mailer’s centenary with a successful conference in Austin, TX, that featured addresses by writer Darryl Pinckney and NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan, over two days of engaging panels, and plenty of fellowship. Our 2024 conference is scheduled for November 14–16 at the Sirata Beach Resort in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida, with keynote speaker David Margolick, esteemed journalist and author, as well as a screening of director David Zimbalist’s new documentary How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer.

In 2023 the Society published Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, edited by Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley, featuring dozens of remembrances about Mailer penned by his admirers, friends, and family, like Don DeLillo, Oliver Stone, and David Denby. 2023 also saw the publication of A Mysterious Country, edited by J. Michael Lennnon and John Buffalo Mailer, a collection of Mailer’s integral writing on the grace and fragility of democracy. Likewise, the Library of America added The Naked and the Dead & Selected Letters 1945-1946, edited by Mike Lennon, to its growing list of works by Mailer. This year we anticipate another important addition to Mailer studies with Lipton’s: A Marijuana Journal, edited by J. Michael Lennon, Gerald R. Lucas, and Susan Mailer, that contains Mailer’s musings and insights from the winter of 1954–1955 as he tried to publish The Deer Park. This year, too, should see volumes 15 and 16 of The Mailer Review published by the fall.

Your contribution also supports the Society’s digital endeavors, like Project Mailer and the Society web site. This year, we have redoubled our web site offerings for your convenience. We now include recent news, conference information, and the ability to pay dues and purchase conference attendance online. We hope that the web site will be the go-to place for members and others who need any information on Mailer and the Society. If you would like to contribute or have an idea for the web site, please let us know.

Finally, we have had a change of the guard beginning in 2024. Maggie McKinley, who has served as president for the last five years, has stepped down. Under her leadership the Society has thrived, and we would like to offer our sincerest gratitude for her commitment to our mission. Assuming her place is Jerry Lucas; Nicole DePolo is the Society’s new vice-president, and we have added a new officer, Enid Stubin as Conference Director. 

Please renew your membership or to join today. Thank you for your unwavering commitment to the Norman Mailer Society. Together, we will continue to celebrate and commemorate the contributions of one of America’s most prolific public figures.

Jerry Lucas
Mike Lennon