Sue Miller, author of the best-selling novel, "The Senator's Wife" joins the growing ranks of literary guests of University College's Inspired Writers series at Fairfield University on Tuesday, April 7 at 7:00 p.m. in the Barone Campus Center Oak Room. Michael White, director of Fairfield University's MFA program in Creative Writing will introduce Miller. Admission is $15 and the public is welcome.

Miller received critical acclaim when "The Senator's Wife" was published in 2008. In this novel, she examines the complexities of women, marriage and relationships as she focuses on two women of different generations living in different worlds, who happen to be neighbors.

The Inspired Writers series provides an opportunity to meet with and discuss the work of fiction writers like Miller in an intimate setting. All manner of questions of the author pertaining to the craft of writing and her particular methods are encouraged.

In her New York Times review, Judith Warner reveals little of the substance of the novel's crescendo, but captures Miller's finely-tuned writing abilities when she notes, "... (I) will just say that in this particular moment Miller plays her hand in a masterly fashion. Shock, deceit, desire and despair come together at once in a way that feels simply like fate. In that remarkable bit of novelistic choreography, I saw in Miller what her fans have always seen: a clever storyteller with a penchant for the unexpected and a talent for depicting the bizarre borderline acts, the unfortunate boundary crossings and the regrettable instances of excessive self-indulgence that can destroy a world in a blink."

From the success of her first novel in 1986, "The Good Mother," through her latest achievement, Miller continues to be "a distinguished practitioner of ‘domestic fiction,' as was noted in a recent biography. By carrying on this tradition, she emulates her favorite writers, from Jane Austen and Henry James to John Updike." Miller, herself, explained her vision of the possibilities she sees in writing of simple life situations in a New York Times "Writers on Writing" article, "For me everyday life in the hands of a fine writer seems ... charged with meaning. When I write, I want to bring a sense of that charge, that meaning, to what may fairly be called the domestic."

The MFA program in Creative Writing (fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry) is currently accepting applications for its July 19-29 summer residency at Mystic, Conn.'s Enders Island. For more information on the MFA program and the Inspired Writers series, visit www.fairfield.edu/mfa or www.fairfield.edu/arts/qc_forum.html#iwriter . To see what Creative Writing candidates have to say about their experience with the program, visit www.fairfield.edu/cas/mfa_testimonials.html . Please call (203) 254-4110 for reservations to hear Sue Miller.

Image courtesy of Elena Seibert

Posted On: 03-23-2009 10:03 AM

Volume: 41 Number: 264