eckerd college events march 22 and 23

Here’s some recent news from Eckerd College:

Eckerd College presents authors Jerald Walker and Lyndall Gordon on Monday, March 22, and Tuesday, March 23, respectively. Both events are
free and open to the public.

Monday, March 22, 7:00 p.m., Miller Auditorium, Eckerd College
We Are Americans:Traveling to the Motherland in Search of One's Racial Identity
Jerald Walker, author of Street Shadows:A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Redemption (Random House, Bantam, January 2010)

In Street Shadows, Iowa Writers' Workshop alumnus Jerald Walker recounts the renunciation of the "thug life" he embraced as a teenager on the south side of Chicago in favor of the education and middle-class life his parents had always dreamed of for their children.

Explored in this memoir are questions of race and identity through the lens of personal choice – including decisions Walker made as a high-school dropout, a drug and alcohol abuser, a returning student, a young academic, and a visitor to Africa in search of his roots. It was this visit to Africa that helped garner Walker national attention when the chapter in Street Shadows that chronicled this journey, We Are Americans, was selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2009.

Tuesday, March 23, 5:30 p.m., Fox Hall, Eckerd College
Lives Like Loaded Guns:Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds
Lyndall Gordon, biographer

Lives Like Loaded Guns:Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds will be published in June 2010 (Penguin, U.S.). This story approaches Emily Dickinson by way of feuds in her family, beginning in the poet's lifetime. The feuds exploded over adultery, but came to focus on the poet herself. Rival camps claimed her legend and shot each other down over the course of three generations.

Lyndall Gordon grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, where she studied history and English, then nineteenth-century American literature at Columbia in New York. A Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Ms. Gordon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and member of PEN. Each summer she participates in the Writing Seminars at Bennington College, Vermont. Ms. Gordon has authored biographies of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Both events are free and open to the public. Learn more about Eckerd’s College Program Series online.