March 8, 1994

Contact: Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189

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Pegasus Prize-Winning Turkish Author To Read at April 11

Turkish author Bilge Karasu will read from his novel Night, which won Mobil Corporation's Pegasus Prize for Literature, in a special program co-sponsored by the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and Mobil Corporation on Monday, April 11, at 6:45 p.m. in the Montpelier Room, sixth floor, Madison Building. Mr. Karasu will read from his novel in its original Turkish; actor Teman Treadway will read from the English translation. Tickets are not required.

Bilge Karasu, short-story writer, novelist, and translator, is a graduate of the philosophy department of the Faculty of Letters of Istanbul University. Born in Istanbul, Mr. Karasu worked in the foreign broadcast department of Radio Ankara until a Rockefeller University scholarship made it possible for him to continue his studies in Europe. After returning to Turkey, he went to work at Hacettepe University, where is now a lecturer in philosophy. In 1963, Mr. Karasu won the Turkish Language Institute's Translation Award with Olen Adam, a translation of D. H. Lawrence's The Man Who Died. By that time, he had begun to experiment with new forms of expression in his collection of stories entitled Troya'da Olum Vardi (Death Prevailed in Troy). He won the Sait Faik Story Award eight years later with Uzun Surmus Bir Gundu Aksami (Evening of a Long Day). By the beginning of the 1980s, he had tried an abstract form of expression in Gocmus Kediler Bahcesi (Garden of Dilapidated Cats) and incorporated other forms of art into his writing. He attempted different uses of form and content in works he styled "texts" rather than "stories." His other works include Kismet Bufessi (Kiosk of Destiny), a collection of short stories; and Kilavuz (The Guide), an experimental novel he describes as a "narration," which was also under consideration for the Pegasus Prize.

Teman Treadway appeared in the Library of Congress literary series in 1991, when he read from Jia Pingwa's novel Turbulence, winner of the 1988 Pegasus Prize, and in 1993, reading from Slovak author Martin Simecka's Pegasus-Prize-winning novel, The Year of the Frog. A graduate of Dartmouth College and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Mr. Treadway has most recently appeared on Washington, D.C., stages with the Chamber Players in "Breaking the Silence" at the Church Street Theatre; in May, he will appear again with the Chamber Players in the play, "Mirandolina," a farce by Goldoni. His other stage credits include the role of Bob Cratchit in "A Christmas Carol" at Ford's Theatre and roles in productions at Source Theater, Potomac Theatre Project, and the Maryland Shakespeare Fest. His television credits include the Emmy-winning "Murder of Mary Phagan," "The Mitch Snyder Story," "Unsolved Mysteries," "Another World," and "Loving." He has appeared in the feature films "Broadcast News and "No Way Out," and soon he will appear in the film "Thunderheart."

Mobil Corporation awards the Pegasus Prize to distinguished works from countries whose literature is rarely translated into English. The prize includes a monetary award, a medal, and translation into English and subsequent publication of the work by Louisiana State University Press. Since Mobil introduced the prize in 1977, it has been awarded in Egypt, Denmark, the Ivory Coast, the Netherlands, New Zealand (for Maori literature), Indonesia, Norway, China, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia. A Latin American regional prize will be awarded in one of seven countries in 1994.

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PR 94-053
3/10/94
ISSN 0731-3527