"Writer"s Writer" Edmund White to Speak

Acclaimed novelist, cultural critic and essayist Edmund White, praised by John Irving as “one of the best writers of my generation,” will read from his works today (Feb. 1) at 8 p.m. in the Kendall Cram Room in the Lavin-Bernick Center.

White is the second visitor in Tulane's new Writer's Writer Series. The first reader in this series was MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Deborah Eisenberg, who appeared at a standing-room-only event in November.

Described as a “gay literary lion” by Salon.com, White is a groundbreaking and influential writer. He is the author of two volumes of memoirs, My Lives and City Boy, and a number of novels, including the classic coming-of-age narrative A Boy's Own Story and Hotel de Dream, an imaginative exploration of the final days of poet and novelist Stephen Crane.

A one-time resident of Paris, White has written biographies of Jean Genet and Arthur Rimbaud, a study of Marcel Proust, and The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris. He now lives in New York and teaches at Princeton University.

The Writer's Writer Series is sponsored by the Department of English Creative Writing Fund. Established by an anonymous donor in 2006, the fund is dedicated to enhancing Tulane's undergraduate creative writing program and developing stimulating literary programming that benefits both Tulane and New Orleans' cultural community.

The event on the Tulane uptown campus, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session, is free and open to the public.