News and Stories
January 29, 2007
40th Annual Notre Dame Literary Festival to take place Feb. 5-8
The Notre Dame Literary Festival will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a variety of literary offerings Feb. 5 to 8 (Monday to Thursday). This year's theme, "Now You're the Metaphor," seeks to inspire students to approach their own lives as a work of art in which they are the writer.
A diverse group of guest authors will be featured in a series of workshops and readings in venues across campus. All festival events are free and open to the public.
This year's schedule is as follows:
- Lolita Hernandez, who writes on the subject of labor and is the author of a collection of short stories titled "Autopsy of an Engine and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant," will be featured Feb. 5, at 10:30 a.m. in 210 McKenna Hall and at 8 p.m. in the LaFortune Student Center ballroom.
- Nathalie Handal, a Palestinian poet, playwright, writer, director and producer, has worked on more than 20 theatrical and film productions worldwide and is the author of two poetry CDs, "Traveling Rooms" and "Spell," and two books of poetry, "The Never Field" and "The Lives of Rain." She also will be featured on Feb. 5, in a workshop at 4 p.m. in 306 LaFortune and in a reading at 7 p.m. in the LaFortune ballroom.
- Hal Sirowitz, the former poet laureate of Queens New York, is the author of four books of poetry: "Mother Said," "My Therapist Said," "Before, During and After" and "Father Said." On Feb. 6, he will hold a writing workshop at 4 p.m. in LaFortune's McNeill Room, and he will read from his work at 8 p.m. in the Oak Room of the South Dining Hall.
- David Rakoff, an essayist and humorist, is the author of two collections, "Fraud" and "Don't Get Too Comfortable." He also is writer-at-large for GQ magazine, a correspondent for Outside magazine and a regular contributor to Public Radio International's "This American Life" and The New York Times Magazine. He will present a reading of his work at 8 p.m. Feb. 7 in the LaFortune ballroom.
- Anne Elizabeth Moore is a freelance writer and advocate of independent media sources from Chicago. Her work has appeared in The Onion, the Chicago Reader, The Bitch, The Stranger, The Progressive, the Journal of Popular Culture and Punk Planet, among others. On Feb. 8, Moore will hold a writing workshop at 3 p.m. in LaFortune's Notre Dame Room, and she will read from her work at 6:30 p.m. in 129 DeBartolo Hall.
- Dave Eggers, founder of the independent book publishing house McSweeney's, is the author of a memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," two novels, "You Shall Know Our Velocity!" and "What is the What," and a story collection, "How We Are Hungry." He has established a group called 826 Valencia, which fights the steady removal of the arts from American public schools by exposing children to creative writing in workshops and in their own classrooms. He will hold a workshop at 4 p.m. Feb. 8 in LaFortune's Notre Dame Room and read from his latest work and other selections at 8 that evening in 101 DeBartolo Hall.
More information on this year's authors can be found on the Web at http://www.nd.edu/~sub/ndlf.html.
Sponsored by Notre Dame's Student Union Board in conjunction with the Institute for Latino Studies, the literary festival has a national reputation for attracting distinguished authors, including past participants Gwendolyn Brooks, Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Kurt Vonnegut and Tennessee Williams.
Contact: Patrick Vassel, Student Union Board, 574-631-7757, sub@nd.edu