UA ALUMNUS AND NATIONALLY KNOWN AUTHOR TO VISIT CAMPUS

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Author Tom Franklin, a U of A graduate, and author William Gay will visit the university campus the week of March 8-12. Their visit, sponsored by the department of English and the programs in creative writing and translation, and funded in part by the Walton Foundation, will include a reading by both authors. The reading will take place at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10 in 102 Kimpel Hall. It is free and open to the public.

Tom Franklin's first novel, "Hell at the Breech," had the Orlando Sentinel exclaiming, "Arguably the most extraordinary first novel to come out of the South since Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain.'" Publisher's Weekly chose it as one of its Best Book Picks for 2003. His collection of short stories, "Poachers," was named a Best First Book of Fiction by Esquire in 1999. Franklin lives in Oxford, Miss., with his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly-also a UA graduate-and their daughter Claire.

William Gay has been praised as "an author with a powerful vision" (The New York Times) and has been compared to William Faulkner. His first novel, "The Long Home," was called "intensely lyrical.darkly comic." His most recent work, "Provinces of Night," was published in 2002 and was praised as "earthly idiosyncratic, spookily Gothic." His fiction also appears in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and other magazines. Gay has won the William Peden Award and the James Michener Memorial Prize. He lives in Hohenwald, Tenn.

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Marissa Fugate, publicity director, UA creative writing program