Mark your calendars: Debra Gwartney and Katherine Dunn are reading at PSU May 21st!

Reading: Nonfiction Writer Debra Gwartney & Fiction Writer Katherine Dunn

Thursday, May 21st, 7 PM

Smith Memorial Student Union, room 236

Q & A following the readings

Debra Gwartney will be reading from her new book, "Live Through This." Gwartney is on the nonfiction writing faculty at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and is co-editor, with her husband Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, published in 2006 by Trinity University Press. Her short stories, personal narratives, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers. Debra is a former reporter for The Oregonian, was a nonfiction scholar at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference, and has received fellowships from Literary Arts, Hedgebrook Writer's Colony, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the American Antiquarian Society.

Praise for Live Through This: "Gutsy, edgy, and revelatory, Gwartney's fast-paced tale of a family in pieces builds to a magnificent, hard-won communion. Her ability to follow the wildness in her own story uncovers truths about every parent, every child."—China Galland, author of Love Cemetery: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves and Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna

Katherine Dunn

Dunn's is celebrating the 20th anniversary of her novel Geek Love, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1989. She also wrote the novels Attic (1970) and Truck (1971). She also wrote the text for Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook (1995), a book of homicide photography; the humorous The Slice: Information with an Attitude (1989) (also published as Why Do Men Have Nipples? And Other Low-Life Answers to Real-Life Questions (1990), which contains her collected newspaper columns from Willamette Week. Dunn has written numerous articles for Playboy, Vogue, and the L.A. Times.

Praise for Geek Love
"Wonderfully descriptive. . . . Dunn [has a] tremendous imagination." —The New York Times Book Review

"Like most great novels, this one keeps the reader marveling at the daring of the author." –Philadelphia Inquirer

"Unrelentingly bizarre . . . perverse but riveting. . . . Will keep you turning the pages." –Chicago Tribune