page_title: Norman Mailer Society
section_title: Activities
hierarchical_section_title: Norman Mailer Society / Activities
caption_attribution_description: English: Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller at the conference of the Norman Mailer Society, 2006, Provincetown, MA.
context_page_description: The Norman Mailer Society is a non-profit literary society dedicated to American author Norman Mailer. The Society promotes the legacy of its eponym by holding an annual meeting of scholars and enthusiasts, publishing The Mailer Review, Project Mailer, and The NMS Podcast, awarding the Robert F. Lucid Award for the year's best scholarship, and encouraging continued interest in his work through all forms of media.
context_section_description: Members meet annually for paper presentations, panel discussions, film viewings, and other activities centered around the life and work of Norman Mailer. In 2015, the Society reconvened in Provincetown, MA, for its annual conference, bringing together Society members, two of Mailer's daughters, and a reading of Tough Guys Don't Dance, Mailer's 1984 novel about his adopted hometown.
  In addition to an annual meeting, the Society undertakes the following activities: the maintaining of a website devoted to matters of interest to the membership, including a newsletter and bibliography updated semi-annually. Along with Provincetown and Brooklyn, conferences have been held in Washington (D.C.), Wilkes-Barre (PA), Long Branch (NJ), Sarasota (FL), and Macon (GA).
  Norman and Norris hosted Society members at post-conference parties, in 2003 at their house in Brooklyn Heights, and 2004 through 2007 at their Provincetown, MA residence. According to Lennon, the Mailers hosted keynote speakers at their house each year for lunch, including Neil Abercrombie and William Kennedy. At the 2006 conference in Provincetown, Mailer read from his new novel, The Castle in the Forest, at the Provincetown Arts Theatre to a packed house of conference attendees and the general public.
  The Society sponsored the 50th Anniversary March on the Pentagon that Mailer wrote about in his Pulitzer-Prize-winning book Armies of the Night. Organized by the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee, the events took place on October 24, 2017 in Washington D.C.
  On May 23, 2018, the Society co-sponsored with the city of Long Branch the installation of a bronze memorial to Mailer and the Scarboro Hotel. The hotel was run and eventually owned by the Mailer family until it burned down in 1941. Members of the Society and the local community attended the unveiling ceremony where the beachside hotel used to stand.
caption: Mailer and Lawrence Schiller at the 2006 conference
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