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Tonight, we're
pleased to continue

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our tradition of
showcasing the work

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of our distinguished
creative writing faculty.

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Jonathan Penner is the
author of two novels,

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Going Blind and Natural
Order, a story collection,

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Private Parties, and a novella,
The Intelligent Traveler's

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Guide to Chiribsco.

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His stories have appeared in
Harper's Commentary, The Paris

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Review, and many
other magazines.

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He's also published book
reviews in the New York

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Times, The Washington
Post, The Boston Globe.

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He earned an MA,
an MFA, and a PhD

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from the University of Iowa.

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Among his many distinctions,
a Guggenheim Fellowship,

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a Fulbright Fellowship
to Yugoslavia,

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fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts

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and the Arizona Commission on
the Arts and the Drue Heinz

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Literature Prize.

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Since 1978, he's taught
fiction writing at the U of A.

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Penner's first
novel, Going Blind,

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was celebrated in the
New Yorker as a truly

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virtuoso performance,
a brilliant little gem

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of a novel.

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Of Private Parties,
the New York Times

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reported, "behind
their comic surface

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there is always the deeply
serious proposition that life

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is both mad and heroic."

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And the novel
Natural Order creates

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a sad and profound counterpoint
between the practice

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of beekeeping rendered
with beautifully

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precise scientific
detail and the entropy

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of a middle aged man who faced
the entropy a middle aged

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man faces in his
family life, his body,

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and his complicated inner life.

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Penner has just completed
a new manuscript

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of stories and a novella
entitled The Groom's Honeymoon.

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Please welcome Jonathan Penner.

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