A First For Philip Roth And The Library Of America

Yaddo writer (and Pulitzer-Prize winner) Philip Roth is set to collaborate with the Library of America on an eight-volume anthology of his works-the first time in the Library's 25-year history that a writer has participated in the project. Mr. Roth, who has been in residence 12 times at Yaddo, joins two other Yaddo novelists, Eudora Welty and Saul Bellow, as the only writers published in their lifetime by the Library of America. In a statement, Mr. Roth said, "It's thrilling to wind up in such company. Nothing could please me more." Yaddo was famously described by Mr. Roth, in an inscription in The Breast, as "the best friends a writer could have."

The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher founded in 1979 to "preserve our nation's literary heritage." The first two volumes of the anthology will come out in 2005, and the series will conclude eight years later to coincide with Mr. Roth's 80th birthday. For more information please visit: www.loa.org.