Fifth Annual Tom Wolfe Seminar Features Distinguished Authors
The opening talk of Washington and Lee University’s fifth annual Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar will be given by author Geraldine Brooks, on Friday, April 18, at 4 p.m. at the Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons. This talk is free and open to the public.
Brooks is the author of five books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “March,” a novel set in the Civil War. Her internationally bestselling novel “Year of Wonders” (2001) is set in England during the plague 1666.
Her most recent book “People of the Book,” a novel that traces the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from medieval Spain across five centuries of European history, is also enjoying critical acclaim. According to the Boston Globe, “There’s a romance between Brooks and the world, and her writing is as full of heart and curiosity as it is intelligence and judgment.”
The seminar’s program this year, “A Writer’s Use of History,” features two distinguished authors, both Brooks and her husband Tony Horwitz. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Horwitz is the author of “Blue Latitudes,” “One for the Road,” “Confederates in the Attic” and “Baghdad Without a Map.”
His most recent book, “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World,” is forthcoming in April. Like his other books, “Voyage” is as much about Horwitz’s efforts to understand history through often humorous personal encounters with the historic places as well as those who tend or otherwise embrace the myths surrounding them.
Suzanne Keen, Broadus Professor of English at W&L and winner of the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award for 2008 from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, will also participate in the seminar.
To attend the weekend seminar (April 18-19), please contact W&L’s Office of Special Programs at 540-458-8723.
