10-12-07

Media Release

Noted Author William Kittredge to Give Reading at OSU

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Award-winning novelist, essayist and Oregon State University alumnus William Kittredge will give a reading in the first floor rotunda of the Valley Library on Thursday, Oct. 18, as part of the OSU Visiting Writer’s Series.

The event begins at 7:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public. In honor of Kittredge and to celebrate the OSU’s literary legacy, there will be a dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. the same day. The new faculty lounge in the English Department’s Moreland Hall will be named in Kittredge’s honor.

Kittredge was born in Portland in 1932 and attended OSU in the early 1950s, where he received a degree in agriculture. For many years he worked on the eastern Oregon ranch on which he was raised, before earning an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1969.

He has published two short story collections, “The Van Gogh Field” (1969) and “We Are Not in This Together” (1984), a memoir, “Hole in the Sky” (1993), and three books of essays, “Owning It All” (1987), “Who Owns the West” (1996), and “The Nature of Generosity” (2000). Last year, his first novel, “The Willow Field” was published. It won the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Award.

The Washington Post wrote of Kittredge’s novel: “The opening chapters of William Kittredge's new Western are so seductive you’ll want to strap on spurs and light out for the territory.”

The reading is sponsored by the OSU Visiting Writers Series through the OSU English Department, The Valley Library and The Office of the Provost.