SOUTH AFRICAN NOVELIST AND NOBEL LAUREATE NADINE GORDIMER TO SPEAK AT BARD COLLEGE ON MARCH 25 Author's Talk Will Explore the Response of Writers to Cataclysmic World Events
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.--For more than 50 years, Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer's novels and short stories have been regarded as the definitive social chronicle of life in South Africa during and after apartheid. She is widely recognized as one of the greatest novelists and short story writers of the 20th century and as a tireless advocate for human rights. On Monday, March 25, at Bard College, Gordimer will discuss the ways in which writers of fiction and poetry, as opposed to journalists, respond to cataclysmic events, such as September 11 and Hiroshima. Her talk, "Witness: The Inward Testimony," will be introduced by Bard president Leon Botstein and renowned Nigerian author and Bard professor Chinua Achebe. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 7 p.m. in Olin Auditorium on the Bard campus.
Born in Springs, a small gold-mining town in South Africa, in 1923, Gordimer published her first novel, The Lying Days, in 1953. Her work, which includes 13 novels and numerous volumes of short stories and essays as well as screenplays, details the extremely complicated personal and social relationships in her home country and the emotional and moral consequences of apartheid. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Among her most celebrated works are the novels A Guest of Honour, The Conservationist, Burger's Daughter, and July's People. Her most recent novel, The Pickup, was published in 2001. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Gordimer is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize, Modern Language Association Award, Grand Aigle d'Or, and Premio Malaparte. She has received honorary degrees from such universities as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Oxford and is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She is a founding member of the Congress of South African Writers, and vice president of PEN International. She has been decorated by France with the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Ars et des Lettres and with the Order of the Southern Cross by South Africa.
For more information on Gordimer's talk, call 845-758-7425.
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(3.12.02)