Acclaimed Novelist Larry Woiwode Reads from His Works, Oct. 10

Chestertown, MD, September 29, 2006 — Washington College's Sophie Kerr Committee presents critically acclaimed novelist Larry Woiwode reading from his works, October 10, at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the Miller Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Born in North Dakota, Woiwode commenced his writing life under the tutelage of New Yorker editor William Maxwell. He is the author of several novels, including Beyond the Bedroom Wall,Poppa John, Born Brothers, Indian Affairs, andSilent Passengers, as well as a memoir titledWhat I Think I Did and a collection of poetry,Even Tide. His first novel, What I'm Going to Do, I Think, won both the William Faulkner Foundation Award and a Notable Book Award from the American Library Association. Beyond the Bedroom Wall (1975) sold more than 2,000,000 copies.

Woiwode's "masterful hand and generous vision transform our most evanescent and commonplace experiences into something akin to gold...they are stories that sharpen our way of seeing from one of America's finest prose stylists," notes novelist Charles Johnson.

In addition to receiving two awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Woiwode has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship as well as the John Dos Passos Prize, and has been nominated for the National Book Award. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review.

The reading is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, which works to carry on the legacy of the late Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, Md., whose generosity has enriched Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, Kerr left the bulk of her estate to the college, specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most "ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor" and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.