Veteran author, critic, essayist and poet Richard Stern will read from his work at 4 p.m. March 22 for The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences’ Writers Series.
The reading, to be followed by a question-and-answer session, will be in Hurst Lounge, Duncker Hall, Room 201.
Over his 50-year career, Stern, the Helen A. Regenstein Emeritus Professor of English and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, has won many prestigious awards for both fiction and nonfiction, as well as the praise of close contemporaries such as Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth.
His books include the novels Golk (1960), Stitch (1965), Other Men’s Daughters (1973) and A Father’s Words (1986), and the collections Noble Rot 1949-1989 (1990), Pacific Tremors (2001) and What Is What Was (2001). Still, this “writer’s writer” remains, as Newsweek magazine described him, “one of this country’s best-kept secrets.”
Stern’s characters, although technically “intellectuals,” are profoundly human, grappling with betrayal, family relations and identity. His lucid prose is illuminated by affectionate character portrayals and well-timed comic strokes, while his fascination with Americans living in Europe and the thread of fictional autobiography that runs through his work earn him, as critic James Schiffer has argued, “a place on the map” of important post-World War II American writers.
A book-signing and reception will follow the reading. The event is free and open to the public.
For more information, call 935-5576.
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