UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Award-winning fiction and creative nonfiction writer Caitlin Horrocks will conclude the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series’ fall semester lineup with a reading at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 1, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.
Horrocks is the author of the short story collection, “This Is Not Your City,” which has been named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, and Tin House, among others. She has won the Plimpton Prize and has been awarded fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MacDowell Colony.
Richard Eder of The Boston Globe said this about “This Is Not Your City”: “What many of the stories have in common is startlingly ingenious writing and a note of what could be called sprightly heartbreak. There is an offhand jauntiness in telling terrible things.” Wayne Harrison of the San Francisco Chronicle noted that the stories in the collection offer “much more than bold plotlines. These are delicate, character-driven stories whose distinct narrators demonstrate the hand of a remarkably versatile writer.”
Horrocks, who currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has a debut novel and second short story collection forthcoming from Little, Brown and Company. When not writing, Horrocks teaches intermediate and advanced fiction and creative nonfiction writing at Grand Valley State University and for the Warren Wilson master of fine arts program. She is also a fiction editor for The Kenyon Review.
The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a project of Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, and the University Libraries.
Additional information, including a listing of upcoming readings in the series, can be found online at https://sites.psu.edu/psuwriters/.