Jayne Anne Phillips to speak at Alkek Library, Porter House

By Brett Fails
University News Service
August 31, 2009

Author Jayne Anne Phillips will give a reading and book signing at Texas State University-San Marcos on Thursday, Sept. 10 in the Alkek Library. Phillips will also appear the following night, Friday, Sept. 11, at the Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle. All events are free and open to the public.

Phillips has published four novels and another collection of highly regarded stories. Her most recent novel is Lark & Termite, which, according to a New York Times book review, "renders what is realistically impossible with such authority that the reader never questions its truth.

At the age of 26Phillips published her first book of stories Black Tickets, winning her the prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Along with this award, Phillips has been featured in Newsweek, when Black Tickets was pronounced "stories unlike any in our literature . . . a crooked beauty" by Raymond Carver. As a classic author in the short story genre, Phillips is currently a professor of English and director of the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark.

The event is cosponsored by the Therese Kayser Lindsey Reading Series, Texas State Department of English and the Wittliff Collections. For further information, contact Michael Noll at (512) 268-6637 or mn19@txstate.