Arts and Entertainment

Rolling Reading Series welcomes author Jennifer Haigh on Dec. 1

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Award-winning novelist Jennifer Haigh will read as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 1 in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium. 

The reading is being held in conjunction with “Human Rights, Fracking and the Struggle for Representation,” a symposium taking place Dec. 1 and 2 on the Penn State University Park campus.  It is free and open to the public.

Haigh is a Pennsylvania native and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  Her work has been published in Granta, Electric Literature, and The Best American Short Stories.

Haigh’s first novel, “Mrs. Kimble,” won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, while her collection of short stories, “News from Heaven,” won the Massachusetts Book Award and the PEN New England Award in Fiction. Her newest book, “Heat and Light,” was named a “Best Book of 2016” by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and NPR.

A Washington Post review of “Heat and Light” calls it “the best fracking novel ever,” noting that the book reminds us “how strongly entwined the state of Pennsylvania is with the history of energy production in this country.”  Janet Maslin, in her New York Times review of the book, adds that “Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention.  Her work is gripping, real and totally immersive … one of her great skills is making the interactions in her books feel utterly true, as well as inevitable.”

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a project within Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. It receives generous support from Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries. Co-sponsorship for Haigh’s reading comes from the Weiss Chair of the Humanities in Literature and Human Rights in the College of the Liberal Arts.

A full listing of upcoming readings can be found at sites.psu.edu/psuwriters/.

Award-winning novelist Jennifer Haigh will read as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 1 in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public. Credit: Rob ArnoldAll Rights Reserved.

Last Updated December 19, 2017

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