Hamilton, NY — The 1999 Living Writers series at Colgate University opens Thursday, September 9 with Rosellen Brown, who will give a public reading at 4:30 p.m. in the Robert Ho Lecture Room, 105 Lawrence.
According to Frederick Busch, Fairchild Professor of English, who teaches the class, the Living Writers course is both an investigation of the nature of fiction and a reading series. ‘On Tuesdays, we discuss a book, and the students do research on it and the author.’ On Thursdays the author comes to class and is interviewed by the students ‘ ‘to find out how fiction is made,’ says Busch. Later in the afternoon the writer gives a reading from the book being discussed. Readings are free and open to the public.
Rosellen Brown is the author of four novels: Before and After, which has been translated into 23 languages and recently became a film starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson; Civil Wars; Tender Mercies; The Autobiography of My Mother; and three collections of poetry ‘ Some Deaths in the Delta, Cora Fry and Cora Fry’s Pillow Book. Brown has also published a collection of stories, Street Games, and a miscellany containing essays, stories and poetry, A Rosellen Brown Reader, one of a series of books by writers associated with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has published widely in magazines and her stories have appeared frequently in O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes. One is included in the recently published best-seller, Best Short Stories of the Century.
Brown has been the recipient of an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Bunting Institute, the Howard Foundation and two from the National Endowment for the Arts. Selected one of Ms. Magazine’s 12 ‘Women of the Year’ in 1984, Brown won the Janet Kafka Prize for the best novel by an American woman in 1984 for Civil Wars. She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The rest of the lineup in this semester’s Living Writers series includes Ward Just on Sept. 16, Pam Durban on Sept. 23, Albert Goldbarth on Sept. 30, Kelly Cherry on Oct. 7, Amy Bloom on Oct. 21, Jane Urquhart on Oct. 28, Chang-rae Lee on Nov. 4, Jim Crace on Nov. 11, John Holman on Nov. 18, Ha Jin on Dec. 2, and a publishing forum on Dec. 9 Readings start promptly at 4:30 p.m. and are held in the Ho Lecture Room, 105 Lawrence Hall. For information contact the Department of English at 228-7262.
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