Editor: Keith DavisWriters: Alex Dippold, Dave Maley
Publisher: Office of Public Information
Volume 22, No.10 January 31, 2000
| Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Alex Dippold, Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No.10 January 31, 2000 |
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Distinguished Visiting Writers Series Continues
The first, a panel discussion on nature and the environment, will be held Tuesday, February 15, at 7:30 p.m. in 225 Williams Hall. Edward Hower, adjunct instructor of writing, will moderate a panel composed of Williams and three faculty members — Marlene Kobre, assistant professor of writing; Rick Kaufman, associate professor of philosophy and religion; and Hugh Egan, associate professor of English. On Thursday, February 17, Williams will read her creative nonfiction at 7:30 p.m. in Muller Chapel. Both events are free and open to the public. Williams’s impressionistic first novel, State of Grace, appeared in 1973 to overwhelming critical acclaim and was nominated for a National Book Award. She has produced three additional novels, two short story collections, a travel guide to the Florida Keys, and a host of nonfiction articles published in such magazines as Paris Review, Esquire, Tri-Quarterly, the New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and Spin. In Williams’s fiction, the ordinary events of daily life become susceptible to bizarre turns of horror, and individuals often get lost in their private selves. Her bleak and sometimes surreal vision has invited comparison with John Hawkes, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Irving. "Joy Williams has dogs the way John Irving has bears," wrote a critic in the New York Times Book Review. "In fact, she seems to judge her people largely on these two bases: whether or not they can make a better second marriage and whether they get along well with dogs. The criteria are probably sounder than most." This keen awareness of nonhuman species is evidenced by Williams’s deep interest in conservation issues. Though an established novelist and short story writer, she also has written nonfiction on such topics as population growth, sport hunting, and deceased punk rocker Wendy O. Williams, whose penchant for chainsawing guitars and detonating sound speakers coexisted with an interest in wildlife rehabilitation. "Joy Williams is strong in the area of what has come to be called creative nonfiction, and we invited her because we wanted to emphasize that kind of writing," says Katharyn Howd Machan, associate professor of writing. "William Kennedy coming here was a good way to expose students to fiction. Joy Williams will show students a kind of first-person writing that can’t really be called autobiography but isn’t exactly a personal essay either. With creative nonfiction there’s a greater awareness of the world outside the author." Born in Massachusetts in 1944, Williams earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. In the late 1960s she was a researcher and data analyst at a U.S. Navy marine laboratory in Florida before taking visiting teaching posts at various universities. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the writers workshop. For more information contact Katharyn Howd Machan at 274-3325. Selected bibliography of Joy Williams
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| Created by Andrejs Ozolins. Updated 31. Jan. 2000 |
Joy
Williams, whose first novel was nominated for a National Book Award and
whose nonfiction has appeared in many prominent periodicals, will visit
the College as the second author in the writing program’s Distinguished
Visiting Writers Series. (Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist William Kennedy
inaugurated the series last September.) Williams will be on campus from
February 14 to 18, giving a weeklong master class to 15 selected writing
students and taking part in two public events.