Jennifer Egan – “The Morgan Lecturer”

Egan PosterPulitzer Prize-Winning Author

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 6:00 p.m.
** Note Time Change **
A book sale and signing will follow

Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, will read from her work A Visit from the Goon Squad and discuss the novel, the characters and her writing process.

The event is co-sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Student Senate, Department of English, Office of Student Development, Department of American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Women’s Center, and the Department of Political Science and the Belles Lettres Literary Society.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Jennifer Egan is the author of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. Published by Knopf in 2010, the book soared to the top of many publications’ Best of 2010 lists, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Slate, Salon, and People. In addition to being awarded the Pulitzer, A Visit from the Goon Squad won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction, was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction and for the Pen/Faulkner award, and was short listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. In addition to her numerous awards, HBO selected Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad for a series treatment.

Egan is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel that became a feature film starting Cameron Diaz, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, and The Keep, which was a national best-seller. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Her nonfiction articles appear frequently in The New York Times magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and her most recent article, ”The Bipolar Kid,” received a 2009 Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Morgan Lectureship

The Morgan Lectureship was endowed by the board of trustees in 1992, in grateful appreciation for the distinguished service of James Henry Morgan of the Class of 1878, professor of Greek, dean, and president of the College. The lectureship brings to campus a scholar in residence to meet informally with individuals and class groups, and to deliver the Morgan Lecture on topics in the social sciences and humanities. Recent scholars have been Jorge Luis Borges, Francis Fukuyama, Michael Ignatieff, Samantha Power, Art Spiegelman and Sandra Steingraber.