Trias Resident Gaitskill to Read
7 September 2012 Trias Resident Gaitskill to Read
The 2012 Trias Writer in Residence Mary Gaitskill will open a year-long series of Trias events on Thursday, Sept. 20, with a reading of her works at 7:30 p.m. in the Hirshson Ballrooom in Hirshson House. Gaitskill, who gave a reading at the Colleges in the spring, is an award-winning author known for her novels including Two Girls, Fat and Thin and Veronica as well as her short stories and essays.
She most recently authored Dont Cry, a collection of stories, in 2009. Gaitskills Veronica, which was nominated for a 2005 National Book Award, National Critics Circle Award, andL.A. TimesBook Award, narrates the single day of a former fashion model as she ruminates on life, youth and a friend who recently died of AIDS.
Harpers Magazinewrote, Mary Gaitskill has been formulating her fiction around that immutable question of how we manage to live in a seemingly inscrutable worldThe marvel of Veronica is how finely this novel reveals a life, and how the novel itself becomes a kind of revelation. She also penned the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, which was nominated for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998.
TheNew York Times Book Reviewnoted [Gaitskills] palpable talent puts her among the most eloquent and perceptive contemporary fiction writers.
Her stories and essays have appeared inThe New Yorker,Harpers Magazine,Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her story Secretary, part of her collection Bad Behavior, was the basis for the 2002 film of the same name. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Gaitskill teaches creative writing at Syracuse University and last year was awarded a Cullman Research Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She has taught at U-C Berkeley, the University of Houston, New York University, Brown and Syracuse University.
Gaitskill graduated from the University of Michigan, where she won an award for her collection of short fiction The Woman Who Knew Judo and Other Stories.
Other authors joining the Trias Series this semester include George Saunders, who will join campus on Thursday, Oct. 18, for a 7:30 p.m. reading of this work in the Geneva Room of the Warren Hunting Smith Library. Saunders, a New York Timesbest-selling author, has written countless short stories, essays, novellas and childrens books and has been featured in the New Yorker, Harper's, and McSweeney's.
Short story and non-fiction writer Wells Tower will give a reading on Thursday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Geneva Room of the Warren Hunting Smith Library. Best known for his short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Tower is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and has been named by the New Yorker as one of the magazines 20 under 40 luminary fiction writers.
The Trias Residency for Writers is supported by The Peter Trias Endowed Fund for Poetry and Creative Writing that was established through a generous bequest from Peter J. Trias 70. Learn more.