Acclaimed writer of "The Liars' Club," "Cherry" and "Lit" to speak at Fairfield University

Mary Karr, poet, memoirist, and author of "The Liars' Club," "Cherry," and "Lit."
Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 8 p.m.
Fairfield University's Dolan School of Business Dining Room. Free.

On Tuesday, October 7, 2014, at 8 p.m., Fairfield University welcomes Mary Karr, the author of the New York Times best-seller "Lit," the sequel to her critically-acclaimed best-selling memoirs "The Liars' Club" and "Cherry." The event is free and open to the public.

Karr's talk - "Imagination and Passion in Christian Spirituality: Lessons for Writers from the Ignatian Exercises" - is the 2014 Catholicism and the Arts Lecture. In her talk, she will discuss how to use Ignatian spirituality in prayer and meditation to discern which paths to follow in writing. The event will take place in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room. It is sponsored by Fairfield University's Center for Catholic Studies. For more information, call (203) 254-4000, ext. 3415.

Karr's next book is "The ABC of Memoir" (fall 2014), a master class on the fastest-growing literary genre. A born raconteur, Karr brings to her lectures and talks the same wit, irreverence, joy, and sorrow found in her poetry and prose. A sought-after keynote speaker, she has given distinguished talks about writing and her career at prestigious universities, libraries, and writers' festivals. She has been the keynote speaker about her alcoholism and recovery to both the medical profession and the recovery community, and has spoken extensively about her unlikely conversion to Catholicism. Karr welcomes conversation with her audience and she is known for her spirited, lively, and engaging Q&A sessions.

"The Liars' Club" won prizes for best first nonfiction from PEN, the Texas Institute for Letters, and was a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Awards. It chronicled her hardscrabble Texas childhood with enough sass and literary verve to spark a renaissance in memoir, cresting the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year. "Cherry" followed and was also a best-seller. Hailed as "the memoir of the season," "Lit" answers the question asked by thousands of fans: How did Karr make it out of that toxic upbringing to tell her own tale? The book also received an avalanche of rave reviews and was an instant best-seller.

Karr has won prizes from Best American Poetry as well as Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essays. Her four volumes of poetry are "Sinners Welcome" (HarperCollins, 2006), "Viper Rum" (Penguin, 1998), "The Devil's Tour" (New Directions, 1993), and "Abacus" (Wesleyan, 1986). She is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.

Karr was also a guest faculty member of Fairfield University's M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program.

For more information about Fairfield University, and for directions to campus, visit www.fairfield.edu.

Posted On: 09-22-2014 03:09 PM

Volume: 47 Number: 62