Because of COVID 19 and concerns for elderly and international members planning to attend, the board of The John Updike Society voted to postpone the 6th biennial JUS conference by exactly one year.

Instead of being held September 30 through October 4, 2020, the conference will be held October 1 through October 3, 2021. The host institution remains Alvernia University, and the conference hotel will still be the Courtyard Marriott Reading. All of the academics who had papers accepted have been told that those papers are still accepted for the 2021 conference. New proposals may be emailed to James Plath, Dept. of English, Illinois Wesleyan University: jplath@iwu.edu.

The conference will coincide with the grand opening of The John Updike Childhood Home, 117 Philadelphia Avenue, Shillington, Pa., which the society owns. For the past four years the society has been restoring the house to how it would have looked in the early 1940s when Updike lived there and also acquiring exhibit materials. At 1 p.m. Saturday, October 2, 2021, there will be a formal ceremony to dedicate a Historic Pennsylvania Marker and unveil a plaque indicating that the house-museum is on the National Registry of Historic Places. Updike’s four children will attend and also participate in a panel on The Maples Stories. Dr. James Schiff will also offer a plenary talk on the recently completed (but still to be published) Updike letters project that he was commissioned by the Updike Literary Trust to edit. Other planned activities include a visit to the Plowville farmhouse and a walking tour of Rabbit, Run and The Centaur sites in the area.

The John Updike Society is comprised of more than 200 Updike scholars, fans, family members and friends, and the kind of just-plain-readers that Updike appreciated. Membership in the society is required to present a paper, but those who submit proposals can join at the time they register for the conference. Details are forthcoming.