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Anthony DoerrThursday, March 1, 7:30 - 8:50 p.m. (Acadia/Bissonet) Friday, March 2, 8:00 - 9:15 a.m. (Acadia) |
Anthony Doerr writes short fiction, book reviews, and a regular column for the Boston Globe, as well as teaching in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College. His fiction has been anthologized in such collections as The Best American Short Stories and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction
and has garnered him numerous prizes, including four O. Henry Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Rome Prize. Doerr has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA Fellowship, and his books have been listed among the New York Times Notable Books (The Shell Collector and Memory Wall). Granta named him on its 2007 list of 21 Best Young American novelists. In addition to his novel About Grace, Doerr has published a creative work of nonfiction called Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World and two short story collections, The Shell Collector and Memory Wall.
Excerpt from "The River Nemunas" (Memory Wall)
I can hear Mishap sniffing around nearby. I can hear the river sliding past and grasshoppers chewing the leaves and the sad, dreamy clanking of faraway cowbells. The sun is tiny and flame-blue. When I finally sit up, Mrs. Sabo is standing beside me. I didn't know she could walk so far. Little white butterflies are looping through the willows. The river glides past. She says something in machine-gun Russian and sets her frozen hand on my forehead. We watch the river, Mrs. Sabo and Mishap and me, in the grass in the sun. And as we watch, and breathe, and I come back into myself-I swear-a fish as big as a nuclear missile leaps out of the river. Its belly is spotless white and its back is gray and it curls up in mid-air and flaps its tail and stretches like it's thinking, This time gravity will let me go.
When it comes back down, water explodes far enough across the river that some drops land on my feet.
Mishap raises his ears.