First-time novelists Ru Freeman and Reif Larsen will be featured Thursday, Jan. 27, when Minnesota State University, Mankato’s Good Thunder Reading Series continues its 2010-2011 programming.
Freeman and Larsen will meet with community writers in a morning question-answer session, and will be interviewed on KMSU 89.7 FM. At 3 p.m. they will lead a discussion about writing in Ostrander Auditorium of the Centennial Student Union. And at 7:30 p.m. they will read from their published work in Centennial Student Union Room 253.
All events are free and open to the public.
Freeman’s creative work, nominated for the “Best New American Voices” anthologies in 2006 and 2008, has appeared or is forthcoming in Guernica, Story Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, WriteCorner Press, Kaduwa and other publications. Her debut novel, A Disobedient Girl, will be published in English, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and Hebrew.
Freeman, who calls both Sri Lanka and the United States home, was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She studied for a year at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, and attended Bates College in Maine. She earned a master’s degree in labor relations from the University of Colombo, and worked in humanitarian assistance and workers’ rights.
Larsen’s first novel, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, is being published in 29 countries. It was a New York Times bestseller, a 2010 Montana Honor book, a Border’s Original Voices Finalist and an IndieBound Award Finalist, and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Larsen studied at Brown University and has taught at Columbia University, where he received an MFA in fiction. A filmmaker, he has made documentaries in the United States, the United Kingdom and sub-Saharan Africa. He lives in Saugerties, N.Y.
An interview with the writers, part of the “Authors in Transit” series on KMSU, will air Thursday, Jan. 27, at 1 p.m. and Friday, Jan. 28, at 11 a.m.
This year’s Good Thunder Reading Series is funded by the Minnesota State Mankato Department of English, the College of Arts & Humanities, the Office of Institutional Diversity, the Nadine B. Andreas Endowment, the Eddice B. Barber Visiting Writer Endowment, the Robert C. Wright Endowment and individual donors. It is made possible by grants from the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council and the Minnesota State Arts Board, from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Library Services and the Barnes & Noble Bookstore at Minnesota State Mankato offer additional assistance.
Those who want more information may call Richard Robbins at (507) 389-1354, or click on www.english2.mnsu.edu/gt/.
Minnesota State Mankato, a comprehensive, doctoral university with 15,393 students, is part of the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system.
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