Award-Winning Author to Discuss “Writing as Remedy”
- When: Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
- Where: Hendrix College, Conway
- Cost: Not available
- Age limit: Not available
- Categories: Book signing
Having spent much of his childhood in charity hospitals crippled by deformed hips and immobilized in body casts, Mark Richard witnessed the unseen drama and peculiar human dynamics of “special” youth—children hailing from the most poverty-stricken regions of the South. He turned to reading for solace and writing for therapy and is now an award-winning novelist, short story writer, poet, and screenwriter.
Richard, who has been described as a “champion to the broken and disabled,” will present “Writing as Remedy,” part of the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language series exploring the theme of “Literature andMedicine.”
The lecture will take place Tuesday, November 13, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., in Reves Recital Hall on the Hendrix College campus. A book signing and reception inTrieschmann Gallery will follow. This event is free and open to the public.
Richard has been called a literary buccaneer and poet laureate of the poor and mostrecently authored the best-selling memoir House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer’s Journey Home. He also authored a pair of award-winning short story collections: The Ice at the Bottom of the World, and Charity; and a novel, Fishboy. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, The Oxford American, Grand Street, and many others.
He is the recipient of the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Mary Francis Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters, and a National Magazine Award for Fiction.
Richard currently teaches at the University of Southern California and has been visiting writer-in-residence at the University of California Irvine, the University of Mississippi, Arizona State University, the University of the South, Sewanee, and The Writer's Voice in New York. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, Spin, Esquire, Vogue, and The Oxford American, among others. He has also been a correspondent for the BBC.
Richard also wrote the screenplay “Stop-Loss,” produced by Paramount, and has been a writer/producer for CBS’s “Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior,” Showtime’s Emmy-winning series “Huff,” “Chicago Hope” on CBS, and “Party of Five” on Fox. He is currently writer/producer for “Hell on Wheels,” a new dramatic series for AMC.
This event is sponsored by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language, which are designed to enhance and enrich the study and teaching of literature and language at Hendrix College. For more information about this and future events, please contact Henryetta Vanaman, 501-450-4597 or vanaman@hendrix.edu.
