Today at the Museum
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Distinguished Writers
Award-winning authors read from and discuss their work, respond to questions, and sign books Maxine Hong Kingston, February 15, 7:30 p.m.
Jeffrey Eugenides, February 24, 7:30 p.m.
Anne Enright & Colum McCann, April 17, 7:30 p.m.
John Irving, May 15, 7:30 p.m.
 
Maxine Hong KingstonWednesday, February 15, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow AuditoriumCommunity Partner:  Maxine Hong Kingston is best known as the author of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, which described her childhood as the daughter of Chinese immigrants in California. The 1976 book was a hybrid of genres, melding Kingston’s memories with Chinese folklore—in creative prose. It was hailed for everything from its magical realist style to its breakthrough explorations of gender, ethnicity, and immigrant life. For this book she won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her follow-up, China Men, won the National Book Award. Anne Tyler wrote of Kingston’s books in New Republic, “They are fiction at its best—novels, fairytales, epic poems.” In 1997 Maxine Hong Kingston was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton. Kingston’s books are staples on college syllabi, overlapping creative writing, cultural studies, and history curricula. Teaching at the University of California at Berkeley and countless seminars with veterans, Kingston has inspired a generation of writers to pen their own personal stories. I Love a Broad Margin to My Life is a free-verse memoir that follows the author from the United States to China and back, pausing along the way for an antiwar rally at the White House and other excursions. At this event, Maxine Hong Kingston will read from her work, discuss her unique blend of magical realism and nonfiction writing, and reflect on aging. After the event:
Enjoy a wine reception and book signing for all attendees at the Crow Collection of Asian Art. Ticket PricesFull $37 Reduced $32 Student $15 Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
  
Jeffrey EugenidesFriday, February 24, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow AuditoriumJeffrey Eugenides has become one of the most admired novelists working today. The New York Times Book Review lauded him, saying, “Mr. Eugenides is blessed with the storyteller’s most magical gift, the ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary.” His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, catapulted him into the literary spotlight. The book became an instant bestseller and was adapted into a feature film by director Sofia Coppola, starring Kathleen Turner and Kirsten Dunst. A decade later, Eugenides garnered a Pulitzer Prize for his next novel, Middlesex. The novel tells the story of Calliope Stephanides, three generations of her Greek-American family, and the guilty family secret they have been hiding. People magazine praised the book as “daring and inventive . . . an epic. . . . This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness.” Jeffrey Eugenides will discuss the body of his work as well as his long-awaited new novel, The Marriage Plot. Set in the early 80s, it tells the story of Madeleine Hanna, a senior at Brown University and devotee of classic literature. Only when curiosity gets the best of her does she enroll in a Semiotics class, a bastion of postmodern liberalism, and meet handsome and mysterious Leonard Bankhead. Completing a love triangle is Madeleine’s friend Mitchell, a clear-eyed religious-studies student who believes himself her true intended. Playing off the traditional Victorian marriage plot, the novel brilliantly and humorously explicates the joy and heartache of young love. Seating in Horchow Auditorium is currently ; however, there will be a live simulcast of the event in another venue at the Museum. Simulcast ticketholders will view the presentation on a big screen and be able to participate in the question-and-answer session with the author. After the event, all ticketholders are invited to the book signing. Upgrades to Horchow Auditorium may be available the night of the event. To get on the upgrade list, visit the Will Call table anytime before the event begins. Will Call will open at 6:30 p.m. and we will begin taking names then.
Simulcast Ticket Prices
Full $20
Reduced $15
Student $10
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
    Anne Enright and Colum McCannAn Irish Writers Evening
Tuesday, April 17, 7:30 p.m.
Horchow AuditoriumAnne Enright began writing in earnest when her family gave her an electric typewriter for her twenty-first birthday. She has published essays, short stories, a nonfiction book, and four novels, and has worked as a television producer and director. Enright’s work explores love and family relationships as well as Ireland’s difficult past and its modern zeitgeist. Her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and was hailed by the judge as “an unflinching look at a grieving family . . . [a] very readable and satisfying novel.” Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations, showing how memories warp and secrets fester. Her new novel, The Forgotten Waltz, is a momentous drama of everyday life and a haunting story of desire, attraction, and longing. Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of two story collections and five novels, as well as a contributor to the New Yorker and the Paris Review. His novel Let the Great World Spin, about Philippe Petit’s breathless tightrope walk between the unfinished World Trade Center towers in 1974, won the 2009 National Book Award for fiction and the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Award. About it, Dave Eggers said, “There’s so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.” McCann’s short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. Raised in Dublin, he has lived in New York for more than ten years. Ticket Prices
Full $37
Reduced $32
Student $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
  
John Irving
in conversation with Kevin MoriartyTuesday, May 15, 7:30 p.m.
Majestic Theatre1925 Elm Street
Suite 500
Dallas, TX 75201John Irving has created a body of fiction of extraordinary range, moving with ease from romance to fairytale to thriller. His first bestseller, The World According to Garp, introduced readers to his inventive style, memorable characters, and masterfully woven stories-within-stories. It won a National Book Award and was made into a film starring Robin Williams. Since Garp’s release, all of Irving’s novels (including A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Son of the Circus, and A Widow for One Year) have been bestsellers and have sold tens of millions of copies. In 2000 he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the adaptation of his novel The Cider House Rules. Irving has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Irving will participate in a moderated onstage conversation with Kevin Moriarty, Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater Center, to share insights about his creative process, the body of his work, and his new novel, In One Person. An absorbing novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love and a passionate celebration of our sexual differences. Irving’s most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, In One Person is a tender portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself worthwhile. “Irving’s writing has a sense of myth and time and weight and resonance. He’s probably the great storyteller of American literature today.” —author Peter Matthiessen Ticket Prices
Full $37
Reduced $32
Student $15
Purchase tickets online or call 214-922-1818.
Arts & Letters Live is presented by  . Additional support provided by the Kay Cattarulla Endowment for the Literary and Performing Arts at the Dallas Museum of Art, TACA, The Hoglund Foundation, The Eugene McDermott Foundation, Annual Series Supporters, and Friends of the Dallas Public Library.
Air transportation provided in part by American Airlines. Hotel accommodations provided in part by The Adolphus. In-kind partners include ArtsDistrictDining.com and Einstein Printing. Promotional support is provided by  and 
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