EVENT CHANGE: The Boston College Office of the Provost has announced that the Apr. 13 talk by Ta-Nehisi Coates has been postponed until next fall.
What makes Gatsby great?
Art historian and author Charles Scribner III — the fourth generation of Scribners to oversee F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works at the family publishing house — will present “From Paradise to Party Lights: Fitzgerald and Gatsby” on Apr. 15 at 5:30 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 101. Scribner will offer both a personal and professional perspective on the legendary Jazz Age writer, the “Last of the Romantics,” and his iconic novel that still defines the magic of American self-invention. An expert in Baroque art, Scribner is the author The Shadow of God: A Journey Through Memory, Art and Faith and The Triumph of the Eucharist: Tapestries Designed by Rubens, among other titles. He was awarded the Yorktown Certificate by the US Department of Treasury for his successful undercover role with US Customs special agents in recovering a Rubens stolen from a museum in Spain, later the subject of the television documentary “The Rubens Robbers.” Sponsor: The Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture Series.
BC Strong
Author Dave Wedge, a Boston College alumnus, will participate in the panel “BC Strong: Boston College Alumni Share Their Stories of the Marathon Bombings” taking place at Robsham Theater on Apr. 14 at 7 p.m. Wedge, a former reporter for the Boston Herald, is co-author of the new book Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph over Tragedy. Other panelists include Patrick Downes and Brittany Loring, both of whom were injured in the blast. The panel will be moderated by award-winning journalist and BC alumna Paula Ebben of CBS Boston. Based on months of intensive interviews, Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph over Tragedy tells the story of the marathon bombings from the perspectives of the cop first on the scene to the detectives assigned to the manhunt to the victims. Wedge will be available to sign copies of book after the event. Read more about the event in the Boston College Chronicle
Sheri Fink
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink will talk about her best-selling book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Random House/Crown, 2013), at Boston College on Apr. 13 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. The culmination of six years of reporting, Five Days at Memorial recounts the life and death choices made at a New Orleans hospital in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The book was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ridenhour Book Prize, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, Los Angeles TimesBook Prize, among others. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series. A former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones, Fink is also the author of War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival, which is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Fink holds a PhD and a medical degree from Stanford University. She is a correspondent for the New York Times. Reviews of Five Days: The Guardian | Entertainment Weekly | New York Times
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged ethics, natural disaster, New Orleans, nonfiction, Pulitzer Prize winner
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The Case for Reparations
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates will present “The Case for Reparations” at Boston College on Apr. 13 at 7 p.m. in the Murray Room of the Yawkey Center. Coates outlined his thesis in a 2014 cover story for The Atlantic. His piece reignited the long-dormant national conversation of just how to repay African Americans for a system of institutional racism. A national correspondent for The Atlantic, Coates is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. He has also written for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, Time, The Washington Post, the Washington Monthly and O magazine. Sponsor: Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculties.
New stories from Michael Keith
Prolific author Michael Keith, an associate professor of the practice in BC’s Communication Department, has published a collection of 51 new stories titled, The Near Enough (Cold River Press, 2015). Keith is the author of more than 20 books, including Voices in the Purple Haze, Signals in the Air, the textbook The Radio Station (now Keith’s Radio Station), the memoir The Next Better Place and eight story collections – Of Night and Light, Everything is Epic, Sad Boy, And Through the Trembling Air, Hoag’s Object, The Collector of Tears, If Things Were Made To Last Forever, Caricatures and The Near Enough.
Book review: Golinkin’s memoir
A Commonweal magazine review of A Backpack, A Bear and Eight Crates of Vodka (Doubleday, 2014) by Boston College alumnus Lev Golinkin draws comparisons to another memoir about a Jewish family fleeing the Soviet Union —Waiting for America by Boston College Professor Maxim D. Shrayer. Called a “gripping account of a family’s flight from tyranny,” Golinkin’s memoir “delves into the experience of everyday life under totalitarianism, the effects of official and cultural anti-Semitism, and the difficulties of growing up as a refugee with a past you would rather forget.” Commonweal magazine review
Posted in Alumni Authors, Boston College Authors
Tagged immigration, Jewish, memoir, Russia, Soviet Union
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