Acclaimed Short Story Writer Karen Russell To Give Reading at Bard College on December 1

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Award-winning fiction writer Karen Russell will read from her work on Monday, December 1, at 2:30 p.m. in Olin 104, the Music Room at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Russell is the author of the acclaimed debut short story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006). The San Francisco Chronicle calls the book “one of the strangest, creepiest, most surreal collections of tales published in recent memory,” adding, “Her writing bristles with confidence.” The American Library Association says, “Her scenes deftly balance mythology and gleeful absurdity with a darker urgency to acknowledge the ancient, the infinite, and the inadequacies of being human.” Library Journal writes, “Russell’s first story collection is a thing of beauty . . . This startlingly original set of stories, which feels as though it might have been written by Lemony Snicket and Margaret Atwood, is not to be missed, and author Russell, whose fiction debuted in the New Yorker and who was chosen by New York magazine as one of ‘25 People to Watch Under 25,’ is poised to become a literary powerhouse.” Russell will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, which is presented as part of Morrow’s course on innovative contemporary fiction, is free and open to the public.

Karen Russell’s first collection of short stories, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was named a Best Book of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times; in 2007 she was featured in the New Yorker’s Debut Fiction Issue and Granta’s Best of the Young American Novelists. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories 2007, ed. Stephen King, and 2008, ed. Salman Rushdie, and in Bard's literary journal, Conjunctions. A native of Miami, she now lives in New York City where she is working on another story collection and a novel about a family of alligator wrestlers, Swamplandia!

For more information about the reading, call 845-758-1539.
###

This event was last updated on 11-26-2008

Back to Top