Monday, September 27, 2010

Three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates will give a reading to students, faculty and community members at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29 in Kenan Auditorium at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Oates' reading, to be followed by a question-and-answer session and book signing, is part of the university's Buckner Lecture Series.

Admission is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Advance tickets, limited to two per person, are now available from the Kenan Auditorium Box Office, and must be picked up in person during regular box office hours, Monday through Friday, noon to 6 p.m. For ticket information, go to www.uncw.edu/kenan/index.html or call 910.962.3500 or 800.732.3643.

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most influential fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize). Her work includes New York Times bestsellers The Falls (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger) and The Gravedigger's Daughter. She has received the Fairfax Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts, the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an O. Henry Award for Continued Achievement in the Short Story and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. What I Lived For was nominated for the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010, Oates won the Prix Bel Ami. In 2001, she was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for the third time.

Born in upstate New York in 1938, Oates received a B.A. from Syracuse University (1960) and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1961). She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University.

The Buckner Lecture Series was established by Charles F. Green III to provide funding to bring distinguished guest presenters to UNCW and to honor his friend, Katherine K. Buckner. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Department of Creative Writing.

For further information, please visit www.uncw.edu/english/buckner.html or contact the chair of the UNCW English Department Buckner Committee, Mark Boren, at borenm@uncw.edu.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu