Mark Your Calendar!

The second visiting writer of the semester, the novelist Ron Hansen, will read from his work on Monday, March 10, 2008 at 8 p.m. On Tuesday, March 11 at 8 he will deliver a talk titled "Making Things Up," about the impulses and experiences that shaped him as a storyteller and convinced him that we need stories.  In asking "what happens to us when we read fiction or watch film?" Hansen's talk will draw upon Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment and Stanislavski's "An Actor Prepares."  Both reading and lecture will take place in Phillips Auditorium.

Born in Nebraska, Mr. Hansen received a B.A. in English from Creighton University and, after a stint in Vietnam, earned his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, where he studied under John Irving and John Cheever.  His works include a collection of short stories (Nebraska, 1989), a volume of essays (A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction, 2002), and six novels (Desperadoes, 1979; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 1983; Mariette in Ecstasy, 1991; Atticus, 1996; Hitler's Niece, 1999; and Isn't It Romantic?, 2003).  A seventh novel, Exiles, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in May.

Hansen's many honors include a Wallace E. Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation grant, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a three-year fellowship from the Lyndhurst Foundation.  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and came to the screen as a highly acclaimed film in 2007.  Atticus was also a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Award in Fiction.  Mr. Hansen is currently Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor of Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University in California.

(Information courtesy of Dr. John Somerville, Director of the Visiting Writers program, and Ron Hansen.  For further information, please contact Dr. Somerville at 517-607-2431.)