UA’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series Welcomes Lydia Davis

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Lydia Davis will read a selection from her latest work at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 19 in 205 Smith Hall on the campus of The University of Alabama as part of the Bankhead Visiting Writers Series.

Davis is the author of three collections of short stories: “Break It Down,” “Almost No Memory” and “Samuel Johnson is Indignant,” as well as a novel, “The End of the Story.”

She has translated several books into English, most recently a new translation of Marcel Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” published in late 2003. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including Conjunctions and McSweeney’s, and has been collected in “Best American Short Stories 1997,” and the “KGB Bar Reader,” among others.

Davis is the recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award (1998), the French-American Foundation Translation Award (1992), a Guggenheim Fellowship and The Lannan Literary Award. She also was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for Fiction, and was recently honored for her translation work with the French Insignia of the Order of Arts and Letters. Davis lives in upstate New York and teaches at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Bard College.

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series is made possible by an endowment from the Bankhead Foundation, The University of Alabama’s Program in Creative Writing, the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information, please contact UA’s creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.