GU Visiting Writers Series Continues March 2 with Rick Moody

Rick Moody, the best-known writer in this year's series, will read from his works at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 2 in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room. Photo ©Thatcher Keats.

SPOKANE, Wash. – Gonzaga University’s 2010-11 Visiting Writers Series continues Wednesday, March 2 when Rick Moody, the best-known writer name this year, reads from his works at 7:30 p.m. in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room. Moody also will do a question-answer event at 1:10 p.m., March 2 at the Jepson Center Wolff Auditorium. The events are free and open to the public.

Moody’s novels include his most recent, “The Four Fingers of Death,” and “Garden State,” “Purple America,” and “The Diviners.” He may be best known for “The Ice Storm” (1994), which made its way to the big screen in the acclaimed 1997 Ang Lee-directed film featuring Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire and Sigourney Weaver. “The Ice Storm” – watch the trailer – is about middle-class families in suburban Connecticut experimenting with casual sex and drinking who find their lives have spun out of control.

“We are excited to host Rick Moody, one of our country’s most celebrated writers,” said Tod Marshall, curator of the series.  “His work shows a mind engaged with a range of subjects, including the clatter of popular culture, the resonance of the New Testament, and the soul-suffocating atmosphere of suburbia.  His visit should be invigorating.”

Moody was born in New York City, attended Brown and Columbia universities, and his first novel, “Garden State,” won the 1991 Editor’s Choice Award from the Pushcart Press. Foreign editions of “The Ice Storm” have been published in 20 countries. A collection of short fiction, “The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven,” was published in 1995. The title story won the 1994 Aga Khan Award from The Paris Review. Moody’s third novel, “Purple America,” was published in 1997. In 1998, Moody received the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2001, he published a collection of short fiction, “Demonology.” In 2002, his book “The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions,” won the NAMI/Ken Book Award, and the PEN Martha Albrand prize for excellence in the memoir. His novel “The Diviners” appeared in 2005, and won the Mary Shelley Award from the Media Ecology Association. “Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas” followed in 2007 and was followed by his new novel, “The Four Fingers of Death,” published in 2010.

Moody’s short fiction and journalism have been anthologized in “Best American Stories 2001,” “Best American Essays 2004,” “Best American Essays 2008,” “Year’s Best Science Fiction #9,” “Year’s Best Fantasy,” and, multiply, in the Pushcart Prize anthology. His radio pieces have appeared on “The Next Big Thing,” “Re:Sound,” “Weekend America,” “Morning Edition,” and at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. His album “Rick Moody and One Ring Zero” was released in 2004, and “The Wingdale Community Singers,” in which he plays and write lyrics, has released two albums, the most recent of which is “Spirit Duplicator” (2009).

Moody has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, the Bennington College Writing Seminars, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the New York Writers Institute, and the New School for Social Research. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Tod Marshall, a poet and associate English professor at Gonzaga, is curator of the Visiting Writer Series. For more information, please contact Marshall at (509) 313-6681 or via e-mail.