Noted Nonfiction and Short Story Writer Ron Carlson to Be Featured in April 5 Reading at Pitt

PITTSBURGH—Acclaimed author Ron Carlson, a professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, will deliver a reading as part of the University of Pittsburgh Writing Program’s 2011-12 Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series at 8:30 p.m. April 5 in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, 650 Schenley Dr., Oakland. The free public event is the final reading of this year’s series.

Carlson is the author of nine books of fiction, with his most recent novel, The Signal (Viking Adult, 2009), drawing comparisons with books by Rick Bass and Jim Harrison. Among Carlson’s other books are his volume of selected stories A Kind of Flying (W.W. Norton, 2003), the novel The Speed of Light (HarperCollins, 2003), and the story collection At the Jim Bridger (Picador paperback, 2003). 

Carlson’s short stories have appeared in such periodicals as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Epoch, and the North American Review, as well as in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize anthology, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, and dozens of other anthologies.

Codirector of the fiction-writing graduate program at UC Irvine, Carlson has received many honors, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares, and a National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award. He earned an MA in English at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

The 2011-12 Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series is cosponsored by Pitt’s Writing Program and The Book Center. For more information, call 412-624-6508 or visit www.pghwriterseries.wordpress.com.

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