FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mar 6, 2008 #013
Contact: Angela Turner
816-235-1592
Cockefair Chair brings Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones to Kansas City
Award-winning writer Edward P. Jones, the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) 2008 Cockefair Chair Writer-in-Residence, will be in Kansas City March 17-21 to visit with UMKC advanced fiction writing classes and high school students from the Kansas City Public School District.Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book "The Known World," will also conduct conferences with creative writing graduate students, attend receptions at the African-American Culture House and New Letters and participate in other events open to the public, including:
A Public Reading at Pierson Auditorium, 5000 Holmes Street, March 19, 7 p.m. Reception immediately following. Admission is free, but reservations required. Please call 816-235-6222 for reservations.
A Symposium with Jones and UMKC fiction writing faculty (Christie Hodgen, Michael Pritchett and Whitney Terrell) at the Kansas City Public Library, 14 W. 10th Street, Thursday, March 20. Reception at 6:30 p.m., reading at 7 p.m. Admission is free, but reservations recommended. Please call 816-701-3407 to reserve a seat.
Jones has been described as one of the most talented American writers currently at work, with words such as "stunning," "miraculous," "extraordinary" and "evocative" readily used to describe his award-winning work. His books include "The Lost City," winner of the PEN/Hemingway and a National Book Award finalist; "The Known World," winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award finalist; and, most recently, "All Aunt Hagar's Children."
With each publication, Jones explores in what the Christian Science Monitor calls "a kind of Biblical style" not just the African-American experience - which he does with unparalleled and unflinching precision - but also the moral ambiguity of the human condition.
The Carolyn Benton Cockefair Chair Writer-in-Residence Program is an annual one-week teaching residency by a nationally renowned poet or prose writer. Recent writers-in-residence have included Mary Gordon, B. H. Fairchild, Stuart Dybek and Eleanor Wilner.
This information is available to people with speech or hearing impairments by calling Relay Missouri at (800) 735-2966 (TT) or (800) 735-2466 (voice).
