Salter, a longtime Bridgehampton resident, was known as a writer’s writer. A novelist of the first rank, he was a contemporary of other East End writers, among them Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, James Jones, George Plimpton. Salter was a decorated Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War, and had a distinguished career as novelist, short story writer, essayist and screenwriter. He wrote what is considered one of the best sports films of all time, Downhill Racer with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman. Salter’s memoir Burning The Days was a bestseller. He was also known for his masterpiece A Sport And A Pastime.

Presenter bio:

Keith Reddin, a playwright and educator, has a decades long connection with the East End arts scene. Mr. Reddin has a deep love of contemporary American literature and a special devotion to the works of James Salter. His plays include Life and Limb, Rum and Coke, Big Time, Nebraska, Life During Wartime, Brutality of Fact, Almost Blue, All the Rage, But Not For Me, Frame 312, Human Error, The Missionary Position, Acquainted with the Night, Pierre. Adaptations include Black Snow, The Imaginary Invalid, Heaven’s My Destination, the one acts of Strindberg and Rear Window. His work has been produced at Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic Theater Company, New York Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Alley Theater, Alliance Theater, American Repertory Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, as well as in London, Berlin, and Tel Aviv. He has also written for film and television, as well as being a professor of playwriting at Columbia University, New York University and the New School. Mr. Reddin lives in East Hampton with his wife Meg Gibson an actor.