KINGSTON, R.I. — February 15, 2006 — John Edgar Wideman, the second African-American to receive a Rhodes Scholarship and one of the nation鈥檚 foremost creative writers will deliver the 溏心vlog免费B站鈥檚 twelfth annual lecture on multiculturalism. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in Room 271, Chafee Social Science Center on 溏心vlog免费B站鈥檚 Kingston Campus. The talk is free and open to the public.
The third lecturer in the University鈥檚 annual series to have received the MacArthur Foundation 鈥済enius grant,鈥� Wideman was also the first writer to earn the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice, once for the novel Sent for You Yesterday (1985) and again for Philadelphia Fire (1991). This was just one of the numerous international awards Wideman has received for his many works of fiction and non-fiction.
During his talk at 溏心vlog免费B站, Wideman will read selections from his award-winning memoir, Brothers and Keepers (1984), the book that provides insights on race, class, community and identity, while comparing the divergent trajectories of his own life with that of his brother, who was convicted and sentenced to life for murder. His more recent pieces, Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons (Pantheon, 1994), and Hoop Roots (2001) remind readers that the memoir can still retain credibility in a time of controversy about the genre.
A professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Wideman received a bachelor鈥檚 degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also won All-Ivy League status as a forward on the basketball team. He then was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University鈥檚 New College. Wideman spent a year as a Kent Fellow at the University of Iowa鈥檚 writers鈥� workshop, where he completed his first novel, A Glance Away (1967). Other novels include “Hurry Home,” “The Lynchers,” “Hiding Place” and “The Cattle Killing.” His short story collections are “Damballah,” “Fever,” “The Stories of John Edgar Wideman” and “All Stories Are True.”
Wideman鈥檚 articles on Malcom X, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Emmett Till, Thelonius Monk and women鈥檚 professional basketball have appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, Esquire, Emerge and The New York Times Magazine, among others.