Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series Hosts Novelist Debra Magpie Earling Oct. 9

October 4, 2002

PITTSBURGH—Novelist Debra Magpie Earling will speak as part of the University of Pittsburgh Writing Program's Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series (PCWS) at 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 9 in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, Schenley Drive, in Oakland. Earling is the second speaker in this free lecture series.

A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, Earling is the author of "Perma Red," her first novel. Set on the Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, the novel traces the turbulent youth and young adulthood of Louise White Elk.

"Perma Red" seems destined to be included in future lists of the fine novels crafted by writers of Native American descent," writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Earling's work has been published in Ploughshares, Northeast Indian Quarterly, and numerous anthologies, including "Reinventing the Enemy's Language," "Song of the Turtle," and "Wild Women: Contemporary Short Stories Celebrating Women."

As a member of the tribes, Earling was the first public defender in the tribal court system and is among 15 American writers and 35 American photographers selected to participate in the National Millennium Survey Project, an exhibition that will travel to seven U.S. cities, Europe, and Asia from 2002-2005.

Earling, who teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula, earned the Bachelor of Arts degree in English at the University of Washington in Seattle and the Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction at Cornell University, where she was a Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellow from 1988-1991.

The "Contemporary Writers Series" is cosponsored by Pitt's Asian Studies Program and the Book Center, and the Wyndham Garden Hotel-University Place.

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