Blashfield Address

In 1916 Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield established a fund for an annual address that would assist the American Academy of Arts and Letters to both preserve the English language in its beauty and integrity, and to cautiously enrich it with such terms as grow out of the modern condition. The focus of the address has evolved over the decades, and is now devoted to some aspect of arts or letters by a distinguished speaker.

Click here for a list of Blashfield Address speakers.

2010 Speaker

The 2010 Blashfield Address, entitled Deadline Poet, was delivered by the journalist and humorist Calvin Trillin at the Ceremonial on May 19, 2010. Mr. Trillin was elected to the Academy in 2008. He has been on the staff of The New Yorker since 1963, and his body of written work includes comic novels, short stories, satirical essays, and political commentary in verse.

  Listen to the 2010 Blashfield Address, as well as the opening remarks by the Academy's president J. D. McClatchy.

  View the text of the 2010 Blashfield Address.