On June 4, Oprah Winfrey's OWN network and O magazine kicked off Oprah's Book Club 2.0, a reading club built around online interaction. The first book chosen for the venture is by a BA alumna, Cheryl Strayed. An English and Women's Studies double major (1997), Strayed in March published Wild, a memoir of her 1995 solo hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. The book has received widespread praise--even bringing Dwight Garner of the New York Times to tears. On the Oprah's Book Club 2.0 website, Ms. Winfrey explains her choice: "It is just a wild ride of a read . . . . It is stimulating, it is thought-provoking, it is soul-enhancing. This book is about being brave when you didn't think you could be."
June 2012 Archives
Zadie Smith, discussing her forthcoming novel NW, is among the writers presented for free this fall by the Department of English and the Creative Writing Program. Smith, the prize-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty, will give the Esther Freier Endowed Lecture 7:30 pm, Tuesday, October 23, at Coffman Union Theater. Other authors in the English@Minnesota Writers Series are: Antonya Nelson, short story writer and novelist (7 pm, October 16, Weisman Museum); poet Christopher Kennedy (7 pm, November 7, Weisman); and creative nonfiction writer Lia Purpura (7 pm, November 14, venue TBA), all sponsored by Creative Writing and the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Endowment. Creative Writing also presents poets and professors Peter Campion and Ray Gonzalez reading at the Weisman 7 pm on October 4. All events are open to the public; no tickets necessary. See you there!
Doctoral candidate Lucia Pawlowski will defend her dissertation, "High Theory, the Teaching of Writing, and the Crisis of the University," as directed by Dr. Geoff Sirc, on Thursday, June 7th, at noon in the Wright Room (Lind 202). All are welcome for the public portion of the defense.
