John Fowles series returns with full schedule of international authors

Chapman University’s acclaimed John Fowles Literary Series returns this spring with a schedule of talks by renowned international authors.

Now in its 14
^th
year, the
John Fowles
Series – named for the late British novelist who wrote
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
– has brought several authors to Chapman, including Sir Salmon Rushdie, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maxine Hong Kingston, Elizabeth George, Elias Khoury, David Antin, Willis Barnstone, Wole Soyinka, Edward Albee and others.

All talks and readings will be held in the Henley Reading Room, second floor of Chapman’s Leatherby Libraries, at 7 p.m.  The series is co-sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Citrus City Grille, the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing in the Department of English and Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The 2012 series is devoted mainly to Latin American writers. Admission is free.

Upcoming talks include:

• Monday, March 5:  Alicia Kozameh, an Argentine author and former political prisoner during the last military dictatorship in her country.  She is the author of Pasos bajo el agua (“Steps Under Water”), a fictionalized account of her experience in prison, and 259 saltos, uno immortal (“259 Steps, the Last Immortal”), inspired by her life as a political exile, among many others.

• Monday, March 12: Marcio Souza, a Brazilian-born author whose first novel, Galvez:  Emperor of Acre, was a huge critical success and became an international phenomenon.  He currently leads the TESC Experimental Theatre and is known for his interest in Amazonia.   He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Monday, March 26: Sergio Chejfec, who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lived from 1990 to 2005 in Venezuela, where he published Nueva sociedad, a journal of politics, culture and social sciences.  He has written several books, including Lenta biografia, Los planetas and My Two Worlds.  He currently lives in New York City and teaches at NYU.

• Monday, April 16: Luisa Valenzuela, born in Buenos Aires, is a novelist and short-story writer, best known for her work written in response to the dictatorship of the 1970s in Argentina. Her works, including Como en la guerra, Cambio de armas and Cola de lagartija, all combine a powerful critique of dictatorship with an examination of patriarchal forms of power structures.   She is one of the most widely translated South American women writers.

• Monday, April 23: Bogdan Suceava, a Romanian writer, is currently an associate professor of mathematics at Cal State Fullerton.  He is the author of five novels and two collections of short stories, including Empire of Belated Generals and Other Stories (2002), Miruna: A Tale (novel, 2007) and Coming from an Off-Key Time (novel, 2011).

For more information on the series, visit the
John Fowles Center for Creative Writing.