Denison University will present fiction writer Kellie Wells as the second speaker in the Beck Lecture Series at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday (Oct. 9) in the Board Room of Barney Davis Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Wells is a recipient of the 2001 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and of the 2002 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, presented to emerging women writers, for her first collection of short stories,Compression Scars. Wells says that O'Connor is a "writer whose work I love, so I was especially honored to have won this prize."

Wells is currently an assistant professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, and also has taught at Georgia College, Milledgeville, and at a summer program in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She earned master of fine arts degrees at both the University of Montana and at the University of Pittsburgh and her doctorate in English and creative writing from Western Michigan University. Wells appears on the Beck Series as the 2003 New Writer Award winner in fiction of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. The GLCA award winners tour the 12 colleges in the association to give readings, meet with students and present classes and seminars.

Her short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, and Washington Square. She has completed her first novel,Skin, which has not yet been published, and is working on a second one that she has tentatively titledFat Girl, Terrestrial.Compression Scars, a collection of 11 short stories that primarily deal with characters struggling with health afflictions, has been hailed as "achingly poignant and downright hilarious" by fellow writer Ellen Akins. Stuart Dybek, who taught Wells when she attended Western Michigan University, calls her writing "consistently fresh and often beautiful."

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:

Name

Barbara Stambaugh

Position Title

Director, Media Relations

Primary Email

stambaughb@denison.edu

Business Phone

(740) 587-8575