NOVELIST SANDRA CISNEROS TO SPEAK AT PITT'S PITTSBURGH CONTEMPORARY WRITERS SERIES

PITTSBURGH, March 27 – Award-winning novelist Sandra Cisneros will be the featured speaker at the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series on Wednesday, April 4, at 8:15 p.m., in the University of Pittsburgh's David Lawrence Hall, Room 120, Oakland.

Cisneros is the author of two collections of fiction. Her first book, "The House on Mango Street," Vintage, 1983, won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award. It has sold more than half a million copies and is in its 34th printing. Her second book, "Woman Hollering Creek," Vintage, 1991, won the PEN Center West Award, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award.

Cisneros also has written two collections of poetry, "My Wicked Wicked Ways," Third Woman Press, 1987, and "Loose Woman," Vintage, 1994, and a bilingual book for children, "Hairs/Pelitos," 1994.

Cisneros work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Glamour, Elle, Ms., The Village Voice, and Grand Street. Her many awards and honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Contemporary Writers Series is co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Wyndham Garden Hotel-University Place, The Book Center, Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, Department of Africana Studies, The Women's Studies Program, Center for Latin American Studies, East Asian Studies, University of Pittsburgh Press, Creative Nonfiction, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and the Honors College.

The series is free and open to the public. For more information, call

412-624-6506.

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