Ithaca College

The School of Humanities & Sciences and the Department of Writing are pleased to present acclaimed essayist Jo Ann Beard as part of this semester's Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. She will read from her work on Wednesday, October 28th at 7:30pm in Klingenstein Lounge, Egbert Hall. The reading is free and open to everyone.

Beard is the author of The Boys of My Youth, a widely praised collection of autobiographical essays that “summons back, with astonishing grace and power, moments of childhood epiphany as well as the cataclysms of adult life: betrayal, divorce, death.” She is also the author of a forthcoming novel.

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Story, Tin House, O. The Oprah Magazine, and The Best American Essays, among other places. A graduate of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, she has received a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides says, “Jo Ann Beard’s work impresses me no end. Funny without being sitcomish, self-aware without being self-absorbed, scrupulous without being fussy, emotional without being sentimental, pointed without being cruel—I could go on and on with these distinctions, all in Beard’s favor, but instead I’ll just say that Jo Ann Beard is a fantastic writer, an Athena born fully formed out of her own painstaking head.”

In addition to giving a reading, Beard will also teach a master class to Ithaca College students. For more information on the reading, contact Jack Wang at wang@ithaca.edu.

Distinguished Visiting Writers Series Website