The Beck Lecture Series at Denison will open its 2006-2007 schedule with Lydia Davis, an upstate New York fiction writer, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday (Sept. 27) in the Barney Davis Board Room. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Davis is the author of a novel,The End of the Story(1995) and three collections of short fiction;Break It Down(1986),Almost No Memory(1997), andSamuel Johnson Is Indignant(2001). Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Exquisite Corpse, Harper's, Shiny, Conjunctions, Granta, Grand Street, and many other literary journals, as well as anthologies such as Best American Short Stories and Best American Poetry. It has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Japanese, and Farsi.

Davis also is translator of a number of avant-garde French novels, memoirs, and volumes of literary criticism, including works by Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and most recentlySwann's Wayby Marcel Proust, which received the French-American Foundation's annual translation prize. Among her other awards and honors, Davis was named a 'Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters" by the French government for her fiction and translation work, and in 2003 she received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is on the faculty of SUNY Albany and the New York State Writers Institute.

The Beck Lecture Series was endowed in memory of Harriet Ewens Beck to bring outstanding writers to the Denison campus. The series has hosted such writers as Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Tom Stoppard and W.S. Merwin. Under the sponsorship fund, each year 10 to 12 writers read from their works and participate in master classes. Also scheduled for this fall are David Harris Ebenbach, Henry Abelove and T.R. Hummer.

Calendar Listing:

CALENDAR LISTING: Denison University, Granville -- The Beck Lecture Series presents author Lydia Davis; 8 p.m., Wednesday (Sept. 27), Barney Davis Board Room (200 West Loop). Free and open to the public. Call 740-587-6207 to confirm information.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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