Brian Evenson, author of several short stories and novellas including The Wavering Knife, will be featured in the spring season of The Plutzik Series at the University of Rochester, reading selections from his works at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in the Welles-Brown Room in Rush Rhees Library on the River Campus.
The Plutzik Series is one of the country's oldest and most prestigious literary reading programs and was established to honor the work of Hyam Plutzik, a distinguished poet and Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University. Events are free and open to the public.
A former member of the Mormon Church, Evenson left both the Church and a teaching position at Brigham Young University following controversy surrounding his first book, Altmann's Tongue. Evenson's works use violence and black humor to tell stories of characters struggling to overcome religious or moral problems. His works have been compared to those of Franz Kafka or Edgar Allan Poe.
In 1995, Evenson received a Creative Writer's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also the recipient of an O. Henry Award for his story Two Brothers in 1998. He received his master's degree and doctorate from the University of Washington.
Evenson is currently an associate professor of English and director of the Literary Arts Program at Brown University. He is the author of five books and has translated several works from French to English. Evenson is also the senior editor of Conjunctions, a literary journal published by Bard College.
The Plutzik Series has featured more than 175 noted writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Hecht, Elizabeth Bishop, and Galway Kinnell. The Plutzik Series is administered by the Department of English. For more information, call (585) 275-4092.