Short Story Writer Darrell Spencer to Read at Penn State Behrend
On Thursday, October 6, short story writer Darrell Spencer will speak at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, as part of the Creative Writers Speaker Series. He will read from his works in the Larry and Katherine Smith Chapel Worship Space at 6:00 p.m. A preceding reception will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Smith Chapel Living Room. Both the reception and the reading are free and open to the public.
Spencer is the author of four books of short stories, including Caution: Men in Trees, co-winner of the 1998 Flannery O’Connor Award, and Bring Your Legs with You, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. He also is a professor of creative writing at Ohio University.
The stories in Bring Your Legs with You, Spencer’s most recent publication, are set in Las Vegas, Spencer’s hometown, and the central figure in the stories is a boxer. Spencer said, “The collection creates a portrait of a decent man who is all-too-human in the mistakes he makes."
Michael Chabon, 2001 Pulitzer Prize fiction winner and judge for the Heinz competition, said, “Spencer possesses a remarkable ear for the cadence of everyday speech, as his characters circle and spar and contend with one another in the clinch of family and marriage, friendship and enmity. His depiction of Las Vegas is so fresh and affecting that I will never be able to visit the city again without seeing it, in part, through the lens of this collection."
The Creative Writers Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the Clarence and Eugenie Baumann Smith Fund and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. For more information about the series, contact the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at 814-898-6108.