Lydia Davis, who published a widely acclaimed new translation of Madame Bovary in fall 2010, gave a reading at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities in September 2011 for the Distinguished Writers Series. Davis received a MacArthur “genius” grant for her writing in 2003, and has published one novel and seven story collections, the most recent of which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She read a series of works from her Collected Stories, published in 2009, as well as a series of short stories inspired by Flaubert's letters. Following the reading, Dan Chiasson, associate professor of English at Wellesley College, led a discussion about the techniques and motivations behind Davis' "painstaking and precise" work.