The Collegian

Issue date: 3/20/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy of www.pen-ne.org Lorrie Moore, an accomplished author, visited campus last week through Saint Mary's Creative Writing Reading Series.

Author Lorrie Moore spoke to Saint Mary's students and faculty about a career in writing and read excerpts from her writings last Wednesday, March 14, 2007, in the Soda Center. Moore graduated from Saint Lawrence University and then received a Masters in Fine Arts from Cornell University. Currently, Moore is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

In 1985, Moore's first book, Self Help, was published. This book is a collection of stories about love, family, pleasure, pain and desire. She has since published five other books including: Anagrams (1986) The Forgotten Helper (1987), Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (1994), and Birds of America (1998). Through her short stories and novels, Moore explores the love and companionship in the lives of modern men and women. She has become a famous American fiction writer mainly for her humorous and emotional short stories. "You're Ugly Too" was her first short story ever to be published in The New Yorker. Other short stories have also been included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike.

As a result of her literary achievements, Moore is the recipient of awards from Lannan Foundation, Foundation Fellowship, Irish Time International Prize for Fiction, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, O. Henry Award and a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Moore began by reading from her short story entitled Paper Loses. This short story made an appearance in The New Yorker last November, and it is a comical tale about the struggles of divorce. The passage she read discussed the struggles of divorce, including the hardships of being a single parent.

The second excerpt that Moore read was from her story, The Juniper Tree. In January 2005, this story also made an appearance in an issue of The New Yorker. The story was dedicated to one of her close friends who passed away just two years ago; it deals with friendship and learning to cope with death.

After reading, Moore had a question-and-answer session to discuss her work. When asked where she draws her inspiration from, she said, "It's hard to know where inspiration comes from. Preservation will only prevail with the heart."

Moore also discussed the relationship between writers and musicians. She said, "Every writer should love books and music... After all, the sound and feeling is what writers are trying to get into sentences."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools