University News

Author Robin Hemley To Visit Western March 23-24

March 9, 2005


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Robin Hemley, director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, will visit Western Illinois University March 23-24 as the Case Visiting Writer.

Hemley will read from his work at the Sandburg Theater at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday March 23 and will speak on the craft of writing, at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 24 in the University Art Gallery. Both events are open free to the public.

The author of seven books, Hemley has won many awards for his fiction including two Pushcart Prizes, The Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune and The George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs among others. His memoir, “Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness,” won an Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. His book “Turning Life Into Fiction” was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection as well as a Quality Paperback Book Club Selection.

According to the University of Iowa department of English web page (www.english.uiowa.edu/faculty/hemley/), “Hemley’s latest book, ‘Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday’ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003) deals with a purported anthropological hoax in the Philippines. James Hamilton Paterson, writing in the London Review of Books, called ‘Invented Eden,’ ‘brave and wholly convincing.’ John Leonard writes in Harpers, ‘Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution.’ ‘Invented Eden’ was an American Library Association's Editor's Choice book for 2003.”

In addition to directing the Nonfiction Writing Program, Hemley is also a graduate of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington University, St. Lawrence University, Vermont College and the University of Utah.

For more information contact Western’s English and journalism department at 309/298-1103.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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