Award-Winning Author Marilynne Robinson to Give Reading and Present McKinney Writing Contest Awards

As Friends has done for many years now, we are once again helping fund the annual McKinney Writing Contest.  This year's awards will be presented to students at a ceremony held on Wednesday, April 17, at 8:00 pm in the Biotech Auditorium in the Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building.
 
Author Marilynne Robinson will present the awards in the categories of fiction, drama, poetry, essay, and electronic media.  She will also read from one of her works and answer questions. The event is free and open to the public.

Marilynne Robinson at the 2012 Festival of Faith and Writing at  Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Marilynne Robinson at the
2012 Festival of Faith and Writing
at  Calvin College in
Grand Rapids, Michigan 

Robinson has written three highly acclaimed novels: Housekeeping (1980),which was made into a movie starring Christine Lahti that I saw at the Spectrum Theatre years ago; Gilead (2004); and Home (2008).  Housekeeping was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Novel.  Gilead was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.  Home received the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction in the United Kingdom.

Since learning Robinson would be coming to campus, I've been trying to get my hands on Housekeeping, but it's always checked out of our library.  I'll bet copies of it will be for sale after the awards are presented.  I should purchase one and ask her to autograph it for me! 
 

Robinson, who received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977, teaches at the Iowa Writers Workshop and lives in Iowa City.

For 72 years, the McKinney Competition has recognized writing talent in various genres among undergraduate and graduate students. The Mary A. Earl McKinney endowment was established by in 1941 by Dr. Samuel P. McKinney, a Rensselaer graduate (1884), in memory of his late wife. The McKinney Competition is administered and judged by the faculty of the Department of Communication and Media, which includes Barbara Lewis, a member of the Board of Directors of Friends of the Folsom Library.


Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library