Fiction writer and essayist Michael Martone to read Oct. 27 and Nov. 3

Acclaimed fiction writer and essayist Michael Martone, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27.

In addition, Martone will speak on coincidence and fate in fiction in a lecture entitled “Homer on Homer or a Bunch of Stuff That Happens” at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3.

Both talks — part of The Writing Program’s fall Reading Series — are free and open to the public and take place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, on the university’s Hilltop Campus. Duncker Hall is located at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle, near the intersection of Brookings and Hoyt drives. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

Marton is the author of several fiction and nonfiction collections, including the forthcoming Michael Martone (FC2), comprised of “contributors notes” in which the author reinvents a character named Michael Martone 44 times; and Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art, a book of writings about writing.

Other books include The Blue Guide to Indiana (2001), Seeing Eye (1995), Pensees: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (1994), Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler’s List (1992), Safety Patrol (1988) and Alive and Dead in Indiana (1984). His collection of essays about the Midwest, The Flatness and Other Landscapes, received the 1998 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction. He is the editor of several anthologies, including Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists (2003) and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction (2000).

“Michael Martone throws an exciting challenge at every reader, forcing us to grapple with our notions of what fiction is and how we perceive the whats, wheres, whens and whos of ‘reality,'” notes David Schuman, coordinator of the Writing Program. “Realism, fabulism, non-fiction; no genre or form will contain this writer, so he shrugs off the constraints of each and forges something new.”

Born in Fort Wayne, IN, Martone graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English before attending the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He currently teaches in the writing program at the University of Alabama and previously taught at Syracuse University, Iowa State University and Harvard University.