The Denison University 2002/2003 Beck Lecture Series will feature Speer Morgan, novelist and editor of The Missouri Review, at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday (Oct. 3) in Barney Davis Hall, Room 110. This event is free and open to the public.

Born in Fort Smith, Ark., Morgan earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas and started seriously writing fiction while doing graduate work at Stanford. During the 1970s, he published articles and stories in The Atlantic Monthly, among other magazines and anthologies, including a story that won Prairie Schooner's Lawrence Foundation Prize in 1978.

Three out of his four novels have been set in Arkansas and Oklahoma.Whipping Boy(1994) was aided by a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship in Fiction. His most recent novel,The Freshour Cylinders(1998), won Foreword Magazine's Silver Award for the best book of the year. It also won an American Book Award in 1999.

Morgan teaches in the English department at the University of Missouri and has edited The Missouri Review for 23 years. As editor, he has been responsible for final selections, the magazine's forewords, and for locating, researching and editing the "found text" and "history and literature" features. He also advised a high school literary magazine, The Hickman Review, which won a national award in 2001.

Morgan has been a visiting writer at the University of Texas (1982) and the University of Arkansas (1997). He has given readings and lectures in the U.S., Spain and at the Paris Writers Workshop in 2000.

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.

For press inquiries:

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Barbara Stambaugh

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Director, Media Relations

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(740) 587-8575