Internationally Acclaimed Author to Visit Georgia Southern University
Georgia Southern University’s Department of Writing and Linguistics, Department of Music and Campus Life Enrichment Committee will present acclaimed fiction writer Eleanor Henderson on Monday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. in the Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Information Technology, Room 1004.
Henderson will read from her debut novel, Ten Thousand Saints, a coming-of-age story that revolves around the punk rock and “straight-edge” music scene in New York City in the 1980s. The story focuses on young people who discover their identities within the musical milieu that defines them.
Both a popular and a critical hit, three different New York Times book reviewers named Ten Thousand Saints among the 10 best books of 2011. The New Yorker, O Magazine, Amazon, Newsweek/Daily Beast and a several other magazines and newspapers also have included the novel in their best books list. Henderson was featured on PBS’ NewsHour earlier this year, and iTunes singled out Ten Thousand Saints for special attention, in part because of the novel’s focus on music.
The novel’s domestic success has spurred interest internationally; it has been published in Great Britain and France, and will appear in Italy in 2013.
“It is wonderful to have such an internationally renowned author visit Georgia Southern,” said Eric Nelson, professor of writing at Georgia Southern University. “We are pleased to be able to present a writer of Eleanor’s caliber to our students and the community.”
The Sept. 24 lecture will also feature a book signing and attendees will have the opportunity to ask the author questions about her work and the writing process.
Henderson was born in Greece, grew up in Florida, and attended Middlebury College and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in 2005. Her fiction has appeared in Agni, North American Review, Ninth Letter, Columbia, and Salon, among other publications. Her story “The Farms” was nominated for a Pushcart and selected by Alice Sebold for The Best American Short Stories 2009. Henderson’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Poets & Writers, The Virginia Quarterly Review and on All Things Considered.
From 2006 to 2010 she taught at James Madison University in Virginia. Now an assistant professor at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, N.Y., with her husband, Aaron, and sons Nico and Henry. Her current writing project is a novel set in southeast Georgia.
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