Alison Hedge Coke
Reynolds Endowed Chair, 308.865.8672
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler will present a reading from his works, followed by a book signing, on Thursday, Sept. 29, at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
The event, which will be held in the Fine Arts Recital Hall located in the UNK Fine Arts Building, will begin at 7:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public. Butler is the second presenter in the UNK Reynolds Series for the fall season.
Butler has published 12 novels including, “The Alleys of Eden” and “Countrymen of Bones,” and six volumes of short fiction, including “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,” for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Butler has also published a volume of his lectures on the creative process called “From Where You Dream.”
He is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two National Magazine Award in Fiction awards, two Pushcart Prizes and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York system.
Butler’s stories have appeared in publications including “The New Yorker,” “Esquire,” “Harper’s,” “GQ” and “The Paris Review.” His stories have also been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of “The Best American Short Stories,” eight annual editions of “New Stories from the South,” and several other major annual anthologies and college literature textbooks. His works have been translated into 19 languages including Korean, Japanese, Polish and Greek.
In addition, he was the charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.”
Over the past 15 years, he has lectured at numerous universities and conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a Literary Envoy for the U.S. State Department.
Butler, who currently lives in Capps, Fla., is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University (FSU).
In the fall of 2001, via the FSU website, Butler revealed his writing process in a webcast that observed him in 17 two-hour sessions writing a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The series is available on iTunes under the title “Inside Creative Writing.”
Upcoming Reynolds Series presentations include: Terese Svoboda, Oct. 10; Patricia Smith, Oct. 20; Miles Waggener, Oct. 27; Joy Harjo, Nov. 15; Reynolds Scholars Reading, Nov. 16; and Rick Marlatt, Dec. 2.
