March 29 - Landiss Lecture: Mark Richard

3/29/2012
7:30 p.m.

Lipscomb University’s Landiss Lecture Series and the Southern Literary Festival present a talk by Mark Richard, critically acclaimed author of House of Prayer No. 2, at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 29, in the Swang Chapel in the Lipscomb’s Ezell Center. This lecture is free and open to the public.

Richard is the author of two award-winning short story collections, including “The Ice at the Bottom of the World” and “Charity,” and a bestselling novel Fishboy. He is the recipient of many awards including the New York Foundation of the Arts fellowship award, National Magazine Award for Fiction and the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award.

His latest book, House of Prayer No.2, an autobiography about his struggle to overcome a birth defect and find his place in the world, was listed on many critics’ lists of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2011.

Crippled by deformed hips as a child, Richard was told he would spend his adult life in a wheelchair. The son of an unpredictable, violent father and a mother who sought inner peace through scripture, Richard spent his bedridden childhood in the company of books. As a young man, he set out to experience as much of the world as possible before his hips failed him. He spent years doing odd jobs and getting into trouble, grappling throughout with his faith and his calling, before winning a national fiction contest and launching an extraordinary writing career.
 
A native of Louisiana, Richard has served as a visiting writer-in-residence at the University of California Irvine, University of Mississippi, Arizona State University, the University of the South, Sewanee and The Writer's Voice in New York. He has also been a correspondent for the BBC.

All Southern Literary Festival workshops are open to Lipscomb students and faculty, and selected workshops are open to the public free of charge. Go to events.lipscomb.edu to see more festival workshops open to the public.