Acclaimed Novelist and Essayist Lynn Freed
Reads at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis
November 16th at 8PM
The Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to welcome novelist and UC Davis Professor Emerita Lynn Freed on Thursday, November 16th at 8 P.M. She will be performing at the John Natsoulas Gallery at 521 1st Street in Davis, reading from and signing copies of her two 2017 publications, The Last Laugh and The Romance of Elsewhere.
Lynn Freed is a South African writer and novelist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Vogue, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, and The New Yorker. She has been awarded the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award for Fiction by The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.
Her short stories “Sunshine” and “The Way Things Are Going” won the 2011 and 2015 PEN/O. Henry Prizes, the nation’s highest honor for short fiction; her story “Ma: A Memoir” was performed on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Several of her novels, as well as her collection of stories, The Curse of the Appropriate Man, have appeared on The New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” list.
Freed released two new books this year, The Last Laugh and The Romance of Elsewhere. Her newest novel, The Last Laugh, is described as “a Campari spritzer of a novel: bubbly and colorful, but with an underlying note of bitterness to add satisfying complexity.” It is highly praised by critics such as Maureen Corrigan of NPR: “Freed’s one-liners on subjects like sleep apnea machines are hilarious; so are the excerpts from Ruth’s columns, which she writes for a senior publication called So Long Magazine. But Freed also gives more somber subjects their due, such as loneliness and the fear of looming dependence.”
Freed’s newly released essay collection, The Romance of Elsewhere, has also been garnering praise from many critics. Critic Phillip Lopate wrote of Freed’s collection, “No one writes funnier, more acutely observant, frank, and intelligent personal essays than Lynn Freed.” Having recently retired from teaching at the University of California, Davis, Freed lives in Northern California. Both of Freed’s newly released books will be for sale by the Avid Reader at her November 16th reading.
Attendees are encouraged to arrive early at the John Natsoulas Gallery to secure a seat, and to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list. The Poetry Night Reading Series, hosted and produced by Davis Poet Laureate Dr. Andy Jones, occurs on the first and third Thursday of every month at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Dr. Andy is supported by a bevy of interns, all of them UC Davis undergraduates.
Who: Lynn Freed
What: The Poetry Night Reading Series
When: Thursday, November 16th at 8 P.M.
Where: John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis
Media Contact: Andy Jones
Email: aojones@gmail.com
The John Natsoulas Gallery 530-756-3938
See the Facebook page for this event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1924519127814956/
You are also invited to join the Poetry in Davis Facebook Page:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2290130152&ref=ts
