Reading by Ann Patchett to Benefit Mickel Library
Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and The Patron Saint of Liars, will give a public reading in Daniel Recital Hall on the campus of Converse College on Nov. 16 at 3 p.m. A suggested minimum donation of $25 is required for admission. College students with proper ID will be admitted free. Proceeds from the reading will benefit the college’s Mickel Library.
Patchett’s talent as a writer was recognized early in her career. While attending Sarah Lawrence College, sold her first story to the Paris Review, where it was published before her graduation. In 1990, she won a residential fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass. It is there that she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, which received a James A. Michener/ Copernicus Award for a book in progress. The book was adapted into a TV movie for CBS in 1997.
Patchett’s second novel, Taft, was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best work of fiction in 1994. Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was short-listed for England’s Orange Prize and earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994. In October of the same year, just three days after the official release of The Magician’s Assistant, Patchett was awarded the Nashville Banner Tennessee Writer of the Year Award. In 1993, she received a Bunting Fellowship from the Mary Ingrahm Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College.
Bel Canto is a New York Times Bestseller and has been awarded the Orange Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle. In Bell Canto, Patchett tells the story of unexpected relationships that bloom between jungle-born revolutionaries and their sophisticated international hostages during a terrorist takeover somewhere in South America.