On Friday, October 31, acclaimed author Laura van den Berg will be the visiting writer at The Gunston School’s annual In Celebration of Books event. She will be giving a keynote address on literary craft at 9 a.m. in the Field House and will also be reading from her work. The craft talk and reading are open to the public.
The Isle of Youth, van den Berg’s second short story collection, was selected as The Gunston School’s community read last summer. It recently won the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and was named a “Best Book of 2013” by over a dozen venues, including NPR, The Boston Globe, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her collection was also shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, as was her first collection of short stories,
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, which was also a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection.
van den Berg will be visiting with Gunston’s English classes throughout the day and plans to meet with the staff of Effectrix, the school’s literary magazine, for an informal question and answer session.
The recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize, her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her first novel, Find Me, will be published in February 2015.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.