English department to host memorial reading in honor of Charles Newman Oct. 26

The Department of English in Arts & Sciences will host a memorial reading in honor of Charles Newman, an acclaimed writer and longtime faculty member, who died last March at the age of 67.

The event takes place at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, in Hurst Lounge. It will feature readings from Newman’s work as well as reminiscences by friends and colleagues.

Speakers include William H. Gass, Ph.D., the David May Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Humanities; Richard “Red” Watson, emeritus professor of philosophy; Margarita Boyers, executive editor of the quarterly journal Salamagundi; and Robert Boyers, editor of Salamagundi and Tisch Professor of Arts and Letters at Skidmore College.

The memorial is free and open to the public. Hurst Lounge is located on the second floor of Duncker Hall, in the northeast corner of Brookings Quadrangle. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

A founding editor of the prestigious literary magazine Tri-Quarterly, Newman earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1960 and taught at Northwestern University from 1964-1975. He served as professor and chair of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University from 1975-79.

From 1978-85, Newman took a break from academia and was owner/manager of a horse- and dog-breeding farm in Volney, Va., while also working on his acclaimed novel, White Jazz, published in 1983.

Newman first came to WUSTL as the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing in January 1984; in 1985 he was visiting professor of English; and in July 1986 he became a full professor.

Newman’s other books include the novels New Axis (1966) and The Promisekeeper (1971), as well as the three-novella collection There Must Be More to Love Than Death (1976). He also penned the autobiographical A Child’s History of America (1973) and a critical work, The Post-Modern Aura: The Act of Fiction in an Age of Inflation (1985).