Monday, February 16, 2004

WILMINGTON, N.C. – The University of North Carolina at Wilmington graduate Brad Land will read from his new memoir, Goat, at 8 p.m. Friday, March 5 in Cameron Hall auditorium at UNCW. A book signing and reception will follow this event, which is free and open to the public.

“With a uniquely hip narrative style, gritty with plenty of heart, Land recounts what it’s like to pledge a fraternity in order to gain his peers’ respect and admiration," says Publishers Weekly. "Immensely readable, Land’s tough yet tender book speaks to the fears and isolation of young alienated adults with compelling power, candor and compassion.”

According to Terry Tempest Williams, author of Leap and Red, “Brad Land’s talent as a writer is his ability to be completely vulnerable on the page, yet command absolute control over his language. It is taut, lean, and suggestive of a highly refined intelligence grounded in instinct. Goat is a book of great muscularity, bearing witness to the violence our culture enacts in the name of ritual. Brad Land shows us through the strength of his storytelling that cruelty not only kills, but maims our souls, one victim at a time.”

Brad Land graduated in 2002 from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, producing as his M.F.A. thesis the memoir Goat, which has been excerpted or reviewed in GQ, Publishers Weekly, The New York Times Book Review, the Village Voice and many other magazines. Land also attended Western Michigan University, where he served as nonfiction editor of Third Coast, and has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. He attended Clemson for one semester and lives in South Carolina.

For further information or to make accommodations for disabilities (three days before the event), contact the Department of Creative Writing at 910/962-7063.