CONWAY, Ark. (January 26, 2017) – Writer Eula Biss will present the 2017 Robert
and Lilian Drake Endowed Lecture at Hendrix College on Thursday, Feb. 2, at
7:30 p.m., in Reves Recital Hall.
The lecture, sponsored by the Department of English at
Hendrix, is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Hendrix
English professor Dr. Giffen Maupin at 501-450- 1238 or maupin@hendrix.edu.
About
Eula Biss
Eula Biss is the
author, most recently, of On Immunity: An Inoculation,
which was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New
York Times Book Review. Her second book, Notes
from No Man's Land: American Essays, won the National Book Critics
Circle Award for criticism in 2010. Her first book, The
Balloonists, was published by Hanging Loose Press in 2002. Her
writing has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Howard Foundation
Fellowship, an NEA Literature Fellowship, and a Jaffe Writers' Award. She holds
a B.A. in nonfiction writing from Hampshire College and a M.F.A. in nonfiction
writing from the University of Iowa. Her essays have recently appeared in The Believer, Harper's,
and The New York Times Magazine. For more information, visit www.eulabiss.net.
About
the Robert and Lilian Drake Endowed Lecture
Established in 2001 by Robert Y. Drake Jr. in memory of his
parents, the Robert and Lillian Drake Endowed Lectureship series at Hendrix
College funds an annual lecture. Professor Drake taught Southern Literature and
creative writing at the University of Tennessee from 1965 until his retirement
in 1999. His short stories about growing up in West Tennessee are familiar to a
generation of Southern readers. While on sabbatical during the fall of 1982,
Drake was a visiting professor at Hendrix and taught a popular course in
"Recent Southern Fiction" to 43 students. During his stay at Hendrix,
which was funded by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation, he also gave public readings
and lectures for the Bertie Wilson Murphy Symposium in Literature and Language.
The affinity he developed for Hendrix as a visiting professor inspired him to
establish the lectureship in the English Department. In February 2004, Miller
Williams, University Professor of English and Foreign Languages at the University
of Arkansas, Fayetteville, gave the inaugural lecture.
About
Hendrix College
Hendrix College is a private liberal arts college in Conway,
Arkansas. Founded in 1876 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church since
1884, Hendrix is featured in Colleges
That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges and is
nationally recognized in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings for
academic quality, community, innovation, and value. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.