The Kurt Vonnegut Society was founded in San Francisco in May of 2008, at the 19th annual meeting of the American Literature Association, a coalition of societies devoted to the study of American authors.
The Society grew out of a roundtable discussion among Vonnegut scholars that served as a retrospective on the writer’s life and work a little over a year after his death. The scholars who participated on the roundtable went on to become the founding members of the International Kurt Vonnegut Society. They included:
- Organizer/Moderator: Susan Farrell
- Participants: William Rodney Allen, Marc Leeds, Charles J. Shields, and Robert T. Tally, Jr.
At the business meeting later that same day, the Society elected Marc Leeds as our first president and webmaster. Robert Tally was elected vice-president.
Kurt Vonnegut Society Presidents
- Marc Leeds, 2008-2012
- Greg Sumner, 2012-2015
- Nicole Lowman, 2016-2017
- Tom Hertweck, 2017-2019
- Zach Perdieu, 2020-
Since the society’s founding in 2008, we’ve organized panels and held business meetings at every subsequent ALA meeting. Please visit the Archives portion of this website for a listing of paper titles and presenters and, when possible, links to full text of the presentations.