'New Yorker' cartoonist Roz Chast to speak at Purdue April 15
April 7, 2015
 |
|
A self-portrait by Roz Chast who will be speaking at Purdue University on April 15 for the 2015 Literary Awards. (Illustration provided) |
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Roz Chast, best known for her cartoons in the "New Yorker," will read and speak on April 15 at Purdue University for the 2015 Literary Awards celebration.
Her reading, which is free and open to the public, is 8 at p.m. in Stewart Center's Loeb Playhouse. Chast is the author and illustrator of several books including "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant," her award-winning graphic memoir, and a collection of her cartoons from 1978 to 2006 is featured in "Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons." She also is author of "What I Hate From A to Z," which is a comic exploration of phobias and aversions, and she collaborated with Steve Martin on a children's book entitled "The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!"
Chast also will speak about her artistic process at the Literary Awards Banquet at 5:30 p.m. in Purdue Memorial Union's North Ballroom. The banquet honors Indiana high school students and Purdue graduate and undergraduate students with more than 80 awards and $11,000 in prize money. Banquet tickets are $17 for students and $25 for adults and can be purchased through April 10 in Heavilon Hall, Room 324, or by directing inquires to the Purdue English department at jhenders@purdue.edu. Tickets include a pre-dinner reception, dinner, awards ceremony and reserved seating for Smith's reading in Loeb Playhouse. The pre-dinner reception is 4:30-5:15 p.m. in Purdue Memorial Union's Anniversary Drawing Room.
These events are sponsored by the Department of English, the College of Liberal Arts and Purdue University Libraries.
"Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant" is about the aging and death of Chast's parents, and it received the autobiography prize in March from the National Book Critics Circle. Her memoir also was the inaugural winner of the Kirkus Prize for Non-Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction. She also was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.
Chast has published two children's books on her own, "Too Busy Marco" and "Marco Goes to School." Her most recent collaboration is with songwriter Stephin Merritt and is entitled "101 Two-Letter Words," for which Chast created the illustrations.
Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu
Source: Nancy Peterson, professor and head of the Department of English, 765-494-6478, njp@purdue.edu
