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, which is open to the public, takes place at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, in Hurst Lounge, Duncker Hall. It will feature readings from Newman’s work as well as reminiscences by friends and colleagues.
Scheduled speakers include William H. Gass, Ph.D., the David May Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Humanities; Richard “Red” Watson, Ph.D., professor emeritus of philosophy; Margarita Boyers, executive editor of the quarterly journal Salmagundi; and Robert Boyers, editor of Salmagundi and the Tisch Professor of Arts and Letters at Skidmore College.
A founding editor of the prestigious literary magazine TriQuarterly, 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 department at Johns Hopkins University from 1975-79.
From 1978-1985, 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.
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 work includes 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).
For more information, call 935-7130.