Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx will present the Center of the American West's Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. on Nov. 29 in the Glenn Miller Ballroom at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The event is free and open to the public and those interested in attending are encouraged to arrive early as seating is limited. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture.
Each year, the CU-Boulder Center of the American West presents a Distinguished Lecture featuring accomplished public figures presenting an original talk about the American West. The lecturers also meet with CU students and faculty, high school students and community members. Previous lecturers include Terry Tempest Williams, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Sherman Alexie and Alan and Pete Simpson.
Proulx is the author of "The Shipping News" and three other novels, "That Old Ace in the Hole," "Postcards" and "Accordion Crimes," and the story collections "Heart Songs" and "Close Range," which includes the story "Brokeback Mountain." She also is the winner of a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, two O. Henry Prizes and a PEN/Faulkner in addition to many others. She lives in Wyoming.
"Reading Annie Proulx's work will turn the tide for people laboring under the belief that the West is either a happy, mythic locale quarantined from sorrow and consequence, or a melancholy region steeped in despair and defeat," said history Professor Patty Limerick, chair of the board of the Center of the American West. "She reminds us, in prose as artful as it is direct, that the West's complication and complexity are inseparable from its glory."
Proulx began her career as a freelance journalist and started writing short stories for Gray's Sporting Journal in the late 1970s. Her first book was "Heart Songs and Other Stories," followed by "Postcards," an across-the-country novel written largely while in residence at the Ucross Foundation in northern Wyoming. She resolved at that time to make Wyoming her permanent base when she could, a resolution she realized in 1994.
In 1988 she got the idea for "The Shipping News" within hours of landing at Port aux Basques in Newfoundland. Over the next two years she made 10 trips to Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula to do research for the book, although she wrote it in Wyoming.
In 1993-94 she traveled extensively in California, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Quebec, Louisiana and Texas doing research for "Accordion Crimes," a novel of immigrant lives and music in North America. But every chance she had she took Wyoming as her subject, resulting in the collection of short stories, "Close Range," published in 1999.
Her next book was the semi-comic novel "That Old Ace in the Hole," largely concerned with the Texas panhandle, and then a second book of short stories, "Bad Dirt," again set in Wyoming.
Proulx studied history at the University of Vermont, graduating cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a masters's degree and passed her doctoral orals at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) in Montreal. Her fields of study were Renaissance economic history, the Canadian north and traditional China.
Proulx's Nov. 29 talk is co-sponsored by the CU-Boulder English department. Her post-lecture book signing will be on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The Center of the American West takes as its mission the creation of forums for the respectful exchange of ideas and perspectives in the pursuit of solutions to the region's difficulties. The center believes that an understanding of the historical origins of the West's problems, an emphasis on the common interests of all parties, and a dose of good humor are essential to constructive public discussion.
For more information call (303) 492-4879 or visit .