Fiction writer Lydia Millet will read from her work at 8 p.m. Sept. 17 in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst Lounge to open the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences’ fall Reading Series.
Millet is the author of six novels, beginning with the subversive coming-of-age tale “Omnivores,” which centers on a young woman whose megalomaniac father turns their home into an armed camp after seceding from the United States. Her second novel, the political satire “George Bush, Dark Prince of Love,” tells the story of a trailer park denizen who becomes obsessed with the 41st president.
Millet’s third novel, “My Happy Life” — which won the 2003 PEN-USA Award for Fiction — follows a nameless woman who, abandoned in a derelict hospital for the mentally ill, spends her days writing memories on the walls.
“Occasionally, a book comes along that is truly written (as writers are instructed books should be) as if it were the writer’s last,” wrote Publisher’s Weekly. “Millet’s sad and infinitely touching third novel … is such an extraordinary work.”
Other novels include the tragicomic “Everyone’s Pretty,” about an alcoholic pornographer seeking immortality; “Oh Pure and Radiant Heart,” which images Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard transported to contemporary America to survey the legacy of the Manhattan Project; and “How the Dead Dream,” a black comedy about an ambitious Los Angeles real estate developer.
Her latest book is the forthcoming story collection “Love in Infant Monkeys.”
The talk is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
For more information, call 935-7130 or e-mail David Schuman at dschuman@wustl.edu.