Newberry Award Winner Karen Hesse will speak at UTC on Wednesday, June 8, in the Raccoon Mountain Room of the University Center at 7 p.m. The public is invited.
Funding for the event is being provided by the Connor Professorship of American Literature, a position currently held by Dr. Craig Barrow.
Hesse's poetic novel Out of the Dust won the Newberry Medal in 1998 and also the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. It has received numerous other awards, including Best Books for Young Adults, 1997, and has been included on seven state reading lists.
Beginning with Wish on a Unicorn which was published in 1991, Hesse has published eleven young adult books and eight children’s books. Many of these have received multiple awards, including The Music of Dolphins--more than twenty awards and recognitions, including Golden Kite Award Honor Book and Best Children's Books of the Year, 1996; Stowaway--Best Children's Books of the Year, 2001; A Light in the Storm: The Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin--Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2000; and Come on, Rain--Best Children's Books of the Year, 2000.
In addition to her public address, Hesse is participating in the Arts Integration and Reading Workshop sponsored by the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts at UTC June 7-10.
Hesse lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, with her husband and two daughters. She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Maryland. Most of her jobs have been connected with books and reading, including being a proofreader, and a typesetter, and working in a library.
Among the many recognitions awarded Karen Hesse is the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship which she received in 2002. Hesse has loved writing since she was a very young child, and she has emerged in a little over a decade as one of the nation’s top writers for children and young adults.
Additional information about Hesse’s presentation is available from the English Department at 425-4238.