Isabel Allende Receives Lawrence Sanders Award at FIU

Isabel Allende received the Lawrence Sanders Award, given by the Creative Writing Program, on the evening of March 5th.  After the award presentation, a standing room only audience enjoyed listening  to a warm, witty, and moving conversation between Allende and Professor Debra Dean.

The award, established in 2010, is given to an author whose work demonstrates the highest literary merit and has gained popular appeal.  Previous recipients are Scott Turow and Pat Conroy. With 19 books that have sold more than 57 million copies in 35 languages, Allende epitomizes the spirit of the award. The Chilean author began her writing career as a journalist and has since collected an array of literary awards from around the world. She has addressed the question of popular appeal and literary merit, writing in the UK’s Observer, “The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership.”

Writers on the Bay Reading Series: Luis Alberto Urrea, February 16

 Please join us for our next Writers on the Bay Reading!

 Luis Alberto Urrea

Thursday, February 16, 2012

8:00 p.m.

F.I.U Biscayne Bay Bookstore

Wolfe University Center, First Floor

3000 N.E. 151st Street
North Miami, Florida 33181

Luis Alberto Urrea, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is the best-selling author of 14 books, most recently Queen of America. The sequel to The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Queen of America continues the spellbinding saga of his distant relation, Teresita Urrea, also known as the Saint of Cabora. 

Winner of numerous awards, Urrea is a novelist, poet and essayist known for his lyrical and sometimes brutal reflections on life along the US-Mexico border. He is Distinguished Professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

This reading is free and open to the public. A reception and book-sigining will follow.

For further information, please email Marta Lee at leem @ fiu.edu

Writer in Residence Madeleine Blais on WLRN's Under the Sun

Madeleine Blais

 WLRN's Under the Sun features "Loyalty Oath," an essay by our Spring 2011 & Spring 2012 Writer in Residence Madeleine Blais about what Florida required of her before she returned here to teach years after she'd left and why Miami is "not so easy to ditch." Listen live.