The Known World
Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture: Edward P. Jones reads from his work
Click here to watch Edward P. Jones on BUniverse.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edward P. Jones gives Boston University’s semiannual Lowell Lecture, joined by Ha Jin (GRS’93), a College of Arts and Sciences professor, and Catherine Tudish (GRS’87) for a reading and book signing.
Tudish reads a selection from her novel, American Cream. Jin reads from a new collection of short stories. Jones reads various selections from his works.
A short question-and-answer period follows the readings. Asked if he is currently planning a new novel, Jones says no, but “even if I were, it’s hard to talk about that kind of thing. It’s like you’re pregnant, and somebody talks about the future of your child, at 5, at 10, at 15, but all you’re hoping for is happiness and health. You can’t think much beyond that.”
On the Bible as an influence on his works, Jones says he had read only “snippets of it growing up,” but in graduate school the most influential literature course he took was The Bible as Literature. He read the entire book. “I didn’t get much out of getting that MFA degree,” he says, “but The Bible as Literature class was worth it.”
The Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Series was established in 2005 to bring distinguished writers to campus to read their works alongside a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty and a recent program graduate. The series is funded by Nancy Livingston (COM’69) and her husband, Fred Levin, through the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.
April 30 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Photonics Center
About the speaker:
Edward P. Jones, a New York Times best-selling author and a Pulitzer Prize–winner, is the recipient of a 2004 MacArthur Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his book The Known World. His first collection of stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was short-listed for the National Book Award. His second collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Jones has taught fiction writing at various universities, including Princeton.
Ha Jin (GRS’93) studied in the Creative Writing Program and became a full professor at BU in 2002. He won the PEN/Faulkner award for War Trash and for Waiting. War Trash was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and Waiting won the National Book Award in 1999. Jin won the PEN/Hemingway Award for his first collection of short stories, Ocean of Words, and the Flannery O’Connor Prize for his second collection, Under the Red Flag. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
Catherine Tudish (GRS’87) is the author of two works of fiction, American Cream and Tenney’s Landing: Stories, which was one of three fiction finalists for the Barnes and Noble Great New Writer’s Award. She previously taught literature and writing at Harvard University and currently teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College and at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.
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