Learning From Prose
Widely known for her witty style of teaching writers how to write, author Francine Prose will visit the uptown campus for a reading and literary discussion on Thursday (Feb. 5) at 6 p.m. in Cudd Hall. The event is hosted by the Tulane University Honors Program and is free and open to the public.
Francine Prose, an author and resident of New York City, has written 15 fiction books and helps expose book lovers to the craft of writing books like the ones they love to read. (Photo by Marion Ettlinger)
“The honors program looks for opportunities to bring to campus speakers or other visitors who we think have something to offer our students,” says Thomas Luongo, associate dean of the honors program. “Francine Prose is a central figure in American literary culture as well as public intellectual culture.”
Prose is the author of 15 books of fiction including the National Book Award finalist, Blue Angel, and the non-fiction New York Times bestseller, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them.
Luongo says students in the honors program are eager about Prose's arrival and will have the opportunity to meet with the author. To prepare, students and professors have spent time reading and exchanging views on Prose's latest novel, Goldengrove, a fictional story that follows its narrator, Nico, 13, through the months following the death of her older sister.
“With Goldengrove, the author who has so brilliantly taken on political correctness, New Age feminism, Columbine and even Elie Wiesel sheaths her acerbic wit for a searching, painful story about one family's grief,” reads a Washington Post review.
Students in the Tulane Honors Program are those with exceptional academic ability who commit to enrolling in at least one honors course each academic year. Honors courses are taught by distinguished visitors and full-time faculty members and prepare the student for the completion of a senior thesis or project.
The honors program admits a highly selective group of incoming freshmen to the program each year based on their high school grade point average and standardized test scores. To remain in the program, students must maintain a grade point average of 3.45 for freshmen and sophomores and 3.6 for juniors and seniors.
