Pitt Opens 2007-08 Contemporary Writers Series With Reading by Renowned Author George Saunders

PITTSBURGH-Author George Saunders will open the 2007-08 Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series season with a reading at 8:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1, in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, 650 Schenley Dr., Oakland.

Saunders is the author of "Civil War Land in Bad Decline" (Riverhead Books, 1996), Pastoralia (Riverhead Books, 2000), "The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip" (Villard, 2000), "The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil" (Riverhead Books, 2005), "In Persuasion Nation" (Riverhead Books, 2006), and "The Braindead Megaphone" (Riverhead Books, 2007). His short fiction has appeared in such publications as "The New Yorker", "Harper's," and "Esquire." Saunders has won the National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2004. In 2006, he was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, commonly called a "genius grant."

Born in Amarillo, Texas, in 1958, Saunders spent most of his childhood in the south side of Chicago. In 1981, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo. In 1988, he received a master's degree in creative writing from Syracuse University. From 1989 to 1996, he worked for Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, N.Y., as a technical writer and geophysical engineer. Saunders is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Syracuse.

Pitt's Book Center, Women's Studies Program, and the University of Pittsburgh Press cosponsor the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series, which runs through April 2, 2008. All events in the Writers Series are free and open to the public.

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