Award-winning authors read from and discuss their work, respond to questions, and sign books
Margaret Atwood, May 31, 7:30 p.m.
Revolution! Joseph J. Ellis and Tom Reiss, June 4, 7:30 p.m.
Margaret Atwood
Friday, May 31, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
First Presbyterian Church of Dallas – NEW LOCATION!
1835 Young Street
Dallas, Texas 75201
In conjunction with the exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece
Margaret Atwood is a giant of modern literature who refuses to rest on her laurels. She has anticipated, satirized, and even changed the popular pre-conceptions of our time, and is the rare writer whose work is adored by the public, acclaimed by the critics, and read on university campuses.
She is an internationally celebrated novelist, poet, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. Her tenth novel, The Blind Assassin, won the 2000 Booker Prize, a prize for which she has received five nominations. Newsday called The Blind Assassin “the first great novel of the new millennium.” Her work, crossing many subject lines and portraying strong female characters, has been published in forty languages and also includes The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, Oryx and Crake, Cat’s Eye, and The Year of the Flood.
Her 2008 nonfiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, was made into a documentary in 2012.
At this event, Margaret Atwood will discuss her accomplished body of work and her creative process. In conjunction with the DMA’s exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece, she will also speak on the influence of Greek myth on her own work. This includes her 2006 book The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, a wry retelling of the familiar story of Homer’s Odyssey from the perspective of his wife, Penelope. In approaching Penelope, Atwood draws on multiple ancient sources to weave a new interpretation of the long-suffering, dutiful wife as a shrewd and practical woman, every bit the equal of her husband in guile and cleverness.
Ticket Prices
Full: $35
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Revolution!
Joseph J. Ellis and Tom Reiss
Tuesday, June 4, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow Auditorium
Author and historian Joseph J. Ellis is one of the nation’s foremost scholars of American history. Library Journal praised him, saying, “He writes history as it should be: as a page turner.” In 2001 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. His book American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson won the 1997 National Book Award.
At this-event he will discuss his newest book, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence, which focuses on the summer of 1776, the most dramatic few months in our country’s founding. The thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire. At the same time, the British dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic. Revolutionary Summer enlivens these historical events with a compelling freshness.
Tom Reiss is an acclaimed journalist and author of the celebrated international bestseller The Orientalist, a biography of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim while living in Germany during the years leading up to the Holocaust. The Dallas Morning News hailed it as a “spellbinding history . . . part detective yarn, part author biography, part travel saga . . . The Orientalist is completely fascinating.”
He will discuss his latest book, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. General Alex Dumas, father of novelist Alexandre Dumas, was born to a Haitian slave and sold into bondage. He made his way to Paris, where he was educated by French aristocracy. After enlisting as a private, he rose through the ranks to command armies at the height of the French Revolution. In April, The Black Count won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography!
Ticket Prices
Full: $35
Student: $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Photo of Elizabeth Strout by Leonard Cendamo
Photo of Margaret Atwood by George Whiteside
Photo of Joseph J. Ellis by Erik Jacobs
Photo of Tom Reiss by Aventurina King
Arts & Letters Live is presented by the Kay Cattarulla Endowment for the Literary and Performing Arts at the Dallas Museum of Art, The Hoglund Foundation, The Eugene McDermott Foundation, Annual Series Supporters, and Friends of the Dallas Public Library.
Air transportation provided in part by American Airlines. Hotel accommodations provided in part by The Adolphus. In-kind partners include ArtsDistrictDining.com and Einstein Printing. Promotional support is provided by
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