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September 13, 2002
Two of MHC's Own to Speak at Odyssey
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Sven
Birkerts
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Sven Birkerts to
Read from
Memoir September 23
Mount Holyoke lecturer
in English and esteemed literary critic Sven Birkerts, author
of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic
Age, will read from his new memoir, My Sky Blue Trades:
Coming Up Counter in a Contrary Time, Monday, September 23,
at 4 pm at the Odyssey Bookshop. This event is cosponsored by
the College's English department.
In the memoir, Birkerts
explores what it means to be an American with roots in a distant
culture. As a boy growing up in suburban Detroit, Birkerts felt
uncomfortable with his family's ties to Latvia, the birthplace
of all four of his grandparents. And yet his struggle to find
his own path led back through the overgrown garden of family lore.
Birkerts weaves his own history (from struggles with his overbearing
father to adventures at Woodstock, from lost loves to his emergence
as a writer) with episodes from his ancestors' lives (from
scenes from Riga and Moscow during the Russian Revolution to tales
of Paris and mistresses and family scandals).
Lynn Pruett '82
to Read from
Ruby River September 24
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Lynn
Pruett '82
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In an event cosponsored
by the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association, Lynn Pruett
'82 will read from her debut novel, Ruby River, at the
Odyssey Tuesday, September 24, at 7 pm. Ruby River chronicles
the life of a young widowed mother trying to raise four girls
while running a truck stop in small-town Maridoches, Alabama.
Full of colorful characters whose lives continually intersect,
the novel is a poignant examination of family, marriage, and community.
Says Lee Smith, author
of Saving Grace, “Lynn Pruett's novel is funny, smart, sexy,
and full of heart.” Silas House, author of Clay's Quilt,
writes, “wonderfully poetic and wildly entertaining Ruby
River is brimming with real life—all of its joys and sorrows
and the moments of revelation in between.”
After graduating from
MHC, Pruett went on to earn an M.F.A. at the University of Alabama.
She has published in American Voice, Southern Exposure, Black
Warrior Review, and Telling Stories, an anthology.
She teaches at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
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