Wyoming Arts Council

Short story master Richard Bausch at UW

Uncategorized | November 21, 2007

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Master of the short story, Richard Bausch will visit the University of Wyoming the week after Thanksgiving as part of the MFA Visiting Writers Series. The critically acclaimed author will read from his work at 5:10 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 28 in Classroom Building 222. Afterward he will answer questions from the audience and sign books. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is free on campus after 5 PM. Bausch has been called “a master of the short story…who writes some of the most gripping dialogue in contemporary letters” (Janet Burroway, New York Times). In his “truly redemptive tales,” he “illuminates both benevolent and malevolent aspects of human nature with dark humor, a spiky imagination, consummate artistry, and unfailing compassion” (Booklist).

Bausch’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Playboy, GQ, Harper’s, O. Henry and Pushcart anthologies, Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South. They have been recently compiled in The Stories of Richard Bausch (2004), which won the PEN/Malamud Award. He is also the author of ten novels, including In the Night Season (1998), Hello to the Cannibals (2002) and Wives & Lovers: Three Short Novels (2004). Often compared to Hemingway as an analyst of the modern male consciousness, he is equally admired for the conviction and credibility of his portrayals of women. In his most recent novel, Thanksgiving Night (2006), Bausch takes a sharp look at his favorite subject: family dynamics, the domestic turmoil and unspoken tensions that are brought to the surface by the country’s most famously confrontational holiday. “He has turned a mirror on us and our next-door neighbors and shown us how real people live and laugh and cry,” according to The Washington Post. “And, yes, how they get into all kinds of mischief.”

Richard Bausch was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, and grew up near Washington DC with his twin brother Robert, who is also a novelist. After serving in the Air Force from 1966-69, he roamed the Midwest and South playing guitar, singing in a rock band, and writing poetry. Later he would go on to earn an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Among his numerous honors and awards are a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Guggenheim, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and a literature award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. A legendary teacher and workshop leader, Bausch currently holds the Lillian and Morrie A. Moss Chair of Excellence at The University of Memphis. But he doesn’t teach writing, he says: “I teach patience, toughness, stubbornness, the willingness to fail. I teach the life. When you feel global doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don’t have any doubt.”

Bausch’s visit is made possible by a generous endowment from the state of Wyoming and is supported in part by a grant from the Wyoming Arts Council, through funding from the Wyoming State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes a great nation deserves great art.The MFA Program is Wyoming’s graduate creative writing program, mentoring a new generation of writers and bringing to the state a wealth of literary talent from the region, the nation and the world. Each semester, the MFA Visiting Writers Series brings a number of distinguished authors to Wyoming. Recent guests include Dorothy Allison, Terry Tempest Williams, David Quammen, Francine Prose, Pico Iyer, Alexandra Fuller and U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. Further info: www.uwyo.edu/creativewriting

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