I loved hearing Marilynne Robinson's non-fiction, which I had not read/heard before, whilst, yes, simply adoring and smitten by her fiction. I was struck by her calm voice in non-fiction, which in its gentle but firm sonorities sounds remarkably like some of her magisterially crafted fictional characters speaking - a scrumptuous and informing resonance and glimpse into the writer.

I fully agree that Roxana Robinson's Choice Chekov reads were spot on - yes the writer's so-fully-aware descriptions of the complexity of human responses to this world and to others has changed remarkably little since the penultimate century. BTW I recommend Chekov's letters from his arduous trip to Sakhalin Island, for similar eye-full and heartbreaking oh-so-modern observes - another non-fiction/fiction resonance.

And Thank You all Penistas for such a lovely and inspiring set of events and bloggs and glogggs and gluuuuggggsss.

I completely agree about M. Robinson and the incredible force of her work that night (it actually made me question the rule they'd established about not reading their own work).
On the other hand, I loved Roxana Robinson's passages of Chekov which seemed shockingly contemporary.

I would mention Marilynne Robinson reading (because, chagrined, she "misunderstood the assignment") from her essay "Wilderness". She began writing fiction, she said by way of introduction, , to put forth the notion of wilderness as home (the fiction was "Housekeeping" in which, powerfully, "home" is subject to the magesterial Idaho landscape in which she grew up.) There was something heartbreaking about this poet of landscape bringing us up short about our hypocrisy about wilderness -- where after all do we hide toxic waste sites, nuclear disposal sites -- out of sight, in the "wilderness" supposedly vast enough to hide anything.... This was not merely lyricism about the loss of birds and trees but a philosophical and moral challenge to what might be called our sentimental approach to what we're losing. Robinson has published nonfction as well as fiction -- I'm going to go back to her book of essays and her book about the effects of nuclear power plants on the North Sea.