The Denison University Beck Lecture Series presents writer Patricia S. Ward at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday (Nov. 10) in the Board Room of Barney Davis Hall (200 West Loop on the Denison campus). The lecture is free and open to the public.

Ward won the GLCA New Writers Award for her novel, "The Bullet Collection." The work also received the Anahid Literary Award and was a Library Journal Best Book. "Ward has produced a powerful story of war and remembrance, bravely diving into the wreckage and bringing back something redemptive," praised the Harvard Review. Her writing has also appeared in several journals including The Literary Review, Epoch Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Ararat, On Spec, Archipelago, and the Post-Gibran Anthology of Arab-American Writers.

Ward was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and is of Danish-Armenian-American heritage. Her family lived in Lebanon throughout the civil war, but was forced to emigrate in 1987 when her father was threatened with being kidnapped. She earned her bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, where she received Hopwood Awards in novel and short fiction, a Colby and Cowden Fellowship, and the Andrea Beauchamp Award. Ward was the 2002 winner of the Radius of Arab American Writers writing contest, and has received a Henfield Award, a Bread Loaf Scholarship, and fellowships at Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is now writing a literary-fantasy trilogy.

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.

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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