Tonight, we're pleased to continue
our tradition of showcasing the work
of our distinguished creative writing faculty.
Jonathan Penner is the author of two novels,
Going Blind and Natural Order, a story collection,
Private Parties, and a novella, The Intelligent Traveler's
Guide to Chiribsco.
His stories have appeared in Harper's Commentary, The Paris
Review, and many other magazines.
He's also published book reviews in the New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe.
He earned an MA, an MFA, and a PhD
from the University of Iowa.
Among his many distinctions, a Guggenheim Fellowship,
a Fulbright Fellowship to Yugoslavia,
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
and the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Drue Heinz
Literature Prize.
Since 1978, he's taught fiction writing at the U of A.
Penner's first novel, Going Blind,
was celebrated in the New Yorker as a truly
virtuoso performance, a brilliant little gem
of a novel.
Of Private Parties, the New York Times
reported, "behind their comic surface
there is always the deeply serious proposition that life
is both mad and heroic."
And the novel Natural Order creates
a sad and profound counterpoint between the practice
of beekeeping rendered with beautifully
precise scientific detail and the entropy
of a middle aged man who faced the entropy a middle aged
man faces in his family life, his body,
and his complicated inner life.
Penner has just completed a new manuscript
of stories and a novella entitled The Groom's Honeymoon.
Please welcome Jonathan Penner.