Internationally renowned author and poet Margaret Atwood will read selections of her work as a part of The Plutzik Reading Series at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, in the Interfaith Chapel on the University of Rochester's River Campus.
The recipient of a Booker Prize for excellence in contemporary fiction for The Blind Assassin, Atwood is best known for her novels and is the author of such acclaimed books as The Edible Woman; The Handmaid's Tale, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and was made into a movie; The Robber Bride, which received the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was named Novel of the Year by the Canadian Authors' Association; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Award in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; and Oryx and Crake.
Atwood's first publication in 1964 was a book of poetry, The Circle Game, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. She also received the E.J. Pratt Medal for her book of poems Double Persephone.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Atwood has been awarded the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit, the French Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and was elected a Foreign Honorary Member for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She currently resides in Toronto.
Atwood's reading will be followed by a special program featuring a performance of her verse set to music. Atwood Songs, a vocal instrumental concert based on five poems set to music by composer Tania León, will be presented at 8 p.m. that evening in the Ingle Auditorium at Rochester Institute of Technology. This program also celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Rochester and is part of the annual "Women in Music Festival" at the University's Eastman School of Music.
The Plutzik Reading Series is one of the country's oldest and most prestigious literary reading programs and readings are free and open to the public. Established to honor the work of Hyam Plutzik, a distinguished poet and Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University, it has featured more than 175 noted writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Hecht, Elizabeth Bishop, and Galway Kinnell. The Plutzik Reading Series is administered by the Department of English. For more information on Atwood's reading, contact (585) 275-4092.