Lee to host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler
Robert Olen Butler
Source: ShortStoryConference.org
Lee University was recently awarded a Literary Touring Grant from South Arts to host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler for the 2016-2017 Writer’s Festival.
Butler will read on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. in the Rose Lecture Hall located in the Helen DeVos College of Education on Lee’s campus. The reading is free, open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing.
Butler will also speak in an Encore class on Southern literature during his visit, according to a media release.
Dr. William Woolfitt, assistant professor of creative writing, was grateful that the grant afforded the opportunity for “outstanding” writers such as Butler to visit campus.
“Butler writes about the complex interactions between people of different cultures, about Americans who travel overseas and Vietnamese immigrants who relocate to the U.S.,” Woolfitt said. “His writing is poignant, humorous and insightful.”
English professor Dr. Kevin Brown said Butler’s writing is perfectly aligned with Lee’s emphasis on cross-cultural perspectives.
“He seems tailor made for who we are,” Brown said. “His experiences are very different than mine, and so I want to hear them because that’s how we understand people who are different than we are.”
Butler is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. He has lectured at universities, spoken at conferences and met with writers’ groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the United States.
He served in the army in Vietnam from 1969-1972, and his writing explores topics such as empathy, human connection, identity, Vietnam and the love between parents and children.
Senior art student Amelia Range expressed her interest in attending the event to learn more about Butler’s writing.
“Every form of art is personal and means different things to different people,” Range said. “Hearing Butler’s insight of his work in a communal environment will open up Lee and the surrounding community to new perspectives and ideas in a way that we typically don’t experience literature.”
Along with the Pulitzer, Butler has been awarded the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature, Pushcart Prizes, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among others. Butler’s work has been translated into 21 languages.
Butler has published 16 novels and six volumes of short fiction, including “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has also hosted a live feed about his creative writing process and is a two-time recipient of National Magazine Awards in Fiction and Pushcart Prizes, according to his website.
For more information about the Writer’s Festival or Butler’s reading, contact Dr. Woolfitt at wwoolfitt@leeuniversity.edu.
