Bosnian-American Fiction Writer Aleksandar Hemon at DePauw February 24

Acclaimed fiction writer Aleksandar Hemon will come to the campus of DePauw University for a reading on Wednesday, February 24. The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Thompson Recital Hall, which is located within DePauw's Green Center for the Performing Arts. Presented by the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series, the program is presented free of charge and is open to all.

Hemon's novel The Lazarus Project, published in 2008, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named as a New York Times "Notable Book" and New York magazine's #1 book of the year. The latter called the work, "An ingenious mirror-narrative about two lives separated by 100 years ... Subtly, the two stories begin to merge, creating a resonance that vibrates simultaneously on many levels-comic, poetic, crude, tender, playful, profound, musical, angry."

The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," Hemon has also authored Love and Obsctacles: Stories (2009); Nowhere Man (2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Question of Bruno: Stories (2000).

Born in Sarajevo, Hemon came to the United States in 1992, intending to stay for a matter of months. While he was traveling, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. He wrote his first story in English in 1995. He now lives in Chicago.

UIndy writers series continues with fiction authors

The University of Indianapolis continues its annual Kellogg Writers Series with three reading and discussion events in February and March.
 
Organized by the university’s English department, the series will feature young-adult novelist John Green on Feb. 8 in Good Hall, fiction writer Doug Crandell on Feb. 10 in Good Hall, and fiction and memoir writer Cathy Day on March 22 in Schwitzer Student Center’s UIndy Hall C. Each appearance begins at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free.

Green’s first novel, 2005’s Looking for Alaska, won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and has been translated into 13 languages. Paramount acquired the movie rights, and Josh Schwartz (creator of Fox’s The O.C.) is writing the screenplay. Green’s second novel, An Abundance of Katherines (2006), was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His latest novel, Paper Town (2008), was on the New York Times bestseller list for children's books and in 2009 won the Edgar Award for best young adult novel.  

Crandell has authored five books including The Flawless Skin of Ugly People, which has been optioned for film by Big Talk Productions. His short stories and essays have been anthologized in Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood; Stories From the Blue Moon Café: An Anthology of Southern Writers; and When I Was a Loser: True Stories of Barely Surviving High School. His new novel, The Peculiar Boars of Malloy will be published this spring.
 
Day’s most recent work is Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love (Free Press, 2008), part memoir about life as a single woman and part sports story about the Indianapolis Colts Super Bowl season. Her first book, The Circus in Winter (Harcourt, 2004), a fictional history of her hometown of Peru, Ind., was a finalist for several awards, a Barnes & Noble “Discover” selection, an “Original Voices” pick at Borders and a Best Book of 2004 on Amazon.com. Day’s fiction and nonfiction have been broadcast on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and “Studio 360” and have appeared in many publications.
 
For more information about the Kellogg Writers Series, endowed by Allen and Helen Kellogg, contact Associate Professor Elizabeth Weber at eweber@uindy.edu or (317) 788-3373. Maps and directions are available at www.uindy.edu/maps.

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat is an artful coming of age story told through the lens of an young girl, Sophie, as she immigrates to the United States from the Haitian countryside. Sophie has to leave her beloved Tante Atie, who has raised her since she was a baby, to go be her mother in New York whom she barely remembers. She soon finds out that the brutal sugar cane fields which her mother, Tante and grandparents worked in left more permanent scars than she realized. Danticat uses her compelling, succinct narrative to chronicle three generations of women's struggle to escape the psychological marks left on them by sexual violence and the brutality of the sugar cane fields. Sophie finds that she too is caught in the same loop as her mother when she runs off with a neighbor, endures sex to please him and becomes pregnant. Sophie's voice has all the directness and disconnect of a young woman trying to find herself among all the trauma around her. This perfunctory tone allows topics like rape and death to come to the forefront of the narrative and then fade quickly away. Breath, Eyes, Memory has a much appreciated psychological depth that Danticat imparts with such winsome writing that it is possible to savor it and be deeply moved by it without being overwhelmed by the injustices suffered by these women. Danticat has received numerous awards for her books such as the International Faialno Prize and the MacArthur Genius Grant. She also has also been active in promoting human rights in Haiti trying to combat the corruption and dire poverty that her books so poignantly portray.