Fourth Annual National Book Awards

Mar 19, 2009



FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Laura Hoverson, Academic Affairs
(218) 299-3257
AMY KELLY, Media Relations director
(218) 299-3642

FOURTH ANNUAL NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS AT CONCORDIA

    Concordia College welcomes two extraordinary authors, Maxine Hong Kingston and Annette Gordon-Reed, for the fourth annual National Book Awards March 26-27. The authors will talk about the people and places they write about at the featured event, Readings and Conversation at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 26 in the Centrum, Knutson Campus Center.  A reception and book signing will follow in the Knutson Campus Center atrium, offering the opportunity for guests to engage in stimulating conversation with the authors.
    Kingston received the 2008 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She has crossed many genres from the personal, writing from the perspective of a child of Chinese immigrants, to working as an editor and writing coach helping veterans to tell their stories of war and peace. In 1997, Kingston received the National Humanities Medal. National Book Foundation judges said her writing has been a true literary mixture that has paved the way for other first-generation American writers.
    Gordon-Reed, National Book Award-winner for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” became fascinated with the life of the third president of the United States at a very early age. While Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s servants, those who were not independent, interested Gordon-Reed. One slave family in particular, the Hemingses, became a lifelong research project. Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University.
    Both authors will conduct master classes at 9:20 a.m., Friday, March 27. Kingston in Frida Nilsen Lounge and Gordon-Reed in Olin Art and Communications Center, Room 124.
    These events are made possible through a partnership between Concordia College and the National Book Foundation. The events are free and the public is invited to attend.
-30-
(kk)
09-068

Information For:

current students
faculty and staff		 parents
alumni		 high school students
admitted students