Humanities

GUEST AUTHORS SERIES

Thursday, April 19 2012

7:00 PM, The Karas Room

Pulitzer Prize Winning Novelist Jane Smiley at MPC

A northern California resident and recipient of the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature, Jane   Smiley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, A Thousand Acres, in 1992.

Her most recent novel, Private Life, spans the years between the end of the Civil War and the coming of World War II and follows its protagonist's life from Missouri to California; it has been called "a masterly, unforgettable novel from one of our finest storytellers." 

On Thursday, April 19,  join us as one of the nation's most celebrated literary artists reads from her fiction and discusses novel writing in the Sam Karas Room of the Technology & Learning Center (TLC). Doors open at 6:30PM; tickets ($10) will be available at the event and can be purchased in advance from the Humanities Division Office. The MPC Guest Authors Series is supported by the Humanities Division and English Department, the MPC Foundation and by a grant from The Arts Council for Monterey County.

On Thursday, March 15 2012, the Series presented novelist and short story writer

AIMEE BENDER

Aimee Bender in the Karas Room, March 15, 2012

[Photo by David Clemens]

Every seat in the Karas Room was filled on Thursday, March 15 for Aimee Bender's appearance. MPC students, faculty and staff, along with members of the greater Monterey area community, enjoyed the author's reading of her own take on Charles Perrault's "Donkey Skin" -- Aimee's story appeared recently in an anthology of "updated fairy tales" titled, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

The story's protagonist is an apprentice "Color Master" who must prepare dresses to order for a demanding King -- a King who intends the dresses for his bride-to-be (who also happens to be his daughter, a fact that infuriates the incumbent Color Master, mentor to the protagonist). How to meet the King's demand for dresses the color of the moon, the sun and the sky -- while expressing outrage at his wedding plans -- is the challenge of the day... and it is met with colors magnificently rendered in Aimee Bender's scintillant, captivating prose.

A lively and inspiring discussion of fiction writing followed the reading, and Aimee signed copies of her books for many in attendance.

If you missed the reading, or if you were present and would like to experience it again, watch for it on AMP's cable channel 27 soon. It will also be available on dvd in the MPC library and in the video archive of the Creative Writing Program.

Author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and the short story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures, Aimee Bender is among the most imaginative and exciting fiction writers of the early 21st Century.

Her stories often combine contemporary realism with elements of fantasy, winning her fictions comparison to the works of magical realist masters and to other present day purveyors of the surreal and fabulous including Haruki Murakami, Italo Calvino and Kelly Link.

Learn more about Aimee Bender at www.flammableskirt.com

The MPC Guest Authors Series brings accomplished literary artists to the main campus in Monterey for public readings and discussions.

Guest Authors also meet with MPC students interested in furthering their own writing achievements by learning from established authors of poetry and prose. The Series is supported by the MPC English Department and Humanities Division, by the MPC Foundation, and by The Arts Council for Monterey County.

The Spring 2011 Guest Author was:

PETER CHILSON

 Author of the award-winning travel memoir Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa and the short fiction collection Disturbance-Loving Species, Peter Chilson has published essays, feature articles and short stories in Audubon, The American Scholar, Ascent, Creative Nonfiction, The Long Story, High Country News, The South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

  His work has twice been selected for the annual anthology, Best American Travel Writing.