[OPLINLIST] Pulitzer Prize Winner to speak in McArthur

[Erick C. Walker]

Pulitzer Prize winner to speak in McArthur April 21

 

Pulitzer Prize recipient Robert Olen Butler, the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, will serve as a keynote speaker for Remembering Community: A Spring Literary Arts Festival on April 21.                    

Since 1981, Butler has written three collections of stories and 11 novels, including Fair Warning, They Whisper, Tabloid Dreams, The Deep Green Sea, and Mr. Spaceman. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is the collection that won him America's highest writing honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993. 

Butler has also written screenplays for Hollywood's major studios, and his stories have been included in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories. He is the director of the creative writing program at Florida State.                                                                                                             In addition to the Pulitzer Prize and two National Magazine Awards (one in 2001 and another in 2005), Butler has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Society of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in numerous journals, including The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Sewanee Review, and New Stories of the South.                                     

Butler garnered much attention when he began a unique program which allowed the world-at-large to witness his creative process of story writing via a dedicated website. For his Inside Creative Writing project, he began with a simple concept for a story and, with no other preparation, began writing every evening for about 19 days, allowing millions of students and would-be writers a golden opportunity to learn from every creative decision as it happened. At the close of each episode, he answered questions e-mailed to him during the broadcast.                             

In a 2004 interview, Butler explained his philosophy concerning the writing process. "I tell my writing students that works of art do not come from the mind, they come from the place where you dream," he said. "I deeply believe that. And so I welcome you to my dreams."                                

Butler will speak at 8 p.m. on April 21 at the Vinton County High School in McArthur. He will give a Creative Writing Workshop at 1:30 p.m. that same day.

Remembering Community: A Spring Literary Arts Festival is sponsored by the Herbert Wescoat Memorial Library and the Friends of the Herbert Wescoat Memorial Library, Inc., in McArthur, Ohio. The festival opens at noon on Friday, April 21, 2006 and the last event will commence at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 23, 2006. All events are free and open to the public; however, advance registration is requested. For more information and to register, contact the library at 740-596-5691 or www.vintoncountypublic.lib.oh.us.
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