Author of Slaveowner’s Narrative to Speak Tonight
Edward P. Jones, Ha Jin, Catherine Tudish read at Lowell Memorial Lecture
The University’s semiannual Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture brings to the BU community some of the country’s most accomplished and well-kown writers, among them former poet laureate Mark Strand and the late Grace Paley. Tonight Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Edward P. Jones will give the Lowell Lecture, joined by Ha Jin and Catherine Tudish for a reading and book signing at 7:30 p.m. at the Photonics Center. A New York Times best-selling author and 2004 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Jones received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Lannan Literary Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Known World, a novel about free black slaveowners in antebellum Virginia. In a 2003 New York Times review, author John Vernon called the novel "an achievement of epic scope and architectural construction, which nonetheless reads like a string of folk tales told by someone slyly watching for your reaction — tales told by a conjurer who distracts you so well that you never know what hit you."
Jones’ first collection of stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was short-listed for the National Book Award, and his second collection, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award.
Jin (GRS’93) studied in the Creative Writing Program and returned to BU as a full professor in 2002. His novel Waiting, which won a National Book Award and a PEN/Faulkner Award, was based on his experiences during his five-year service in the Red Army. He received the PEN/Hemingway Award for his first collection of short stories, Ocean of Words, and the Flannery O’Connor Prize for his second, Under the Red Flag. His book War Trash won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2005. His latest book is A Free Life. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
Tudish (GRS’87) is the author of two books of fiction, Tenney’s Landing: Stories, one of three fiction finalists for the Barnes & Noble Great New Writers Award, and American Cream. Tudish taught literature and writing at Harvard for eight years before moving to Strafford, Vt., in 1994. She currently teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College and at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.
Established in 2005, the Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Series brings distinguished writers to campus to read their works alongside members of the Creative Writing Program faculty and a program graduate. The lecture series is funded by Nancy Livingston (COM’69) and her husband, Fred Levin, through the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.
The Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture is on Wednesday, April 30, at 7:30 p.m. at the Photonics Center, 8 Saint Mary’s St., Room 206. For more information, contact Brandy Barents at 617-353-2821 or barents@bu.edu.
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