Promoting and strengthening the artistic and cultural development of Orange County, North Carolina
Ben Fountain, 2024 Thomas Wolfe Prize recipient, will give a public reading on Tuesday, September 24 at 7:30pm in Moeser Auditorium in Hill Hall on UNC-CH campus. The reading is free and open to the public.
On the strength of four great books – two novels, a short story collection, and a searing journalistic account of the 2016 presidential election – Ben Fountain has established himself as one of our country’s most important writers. At once literary, political, specific, and expansive, his work beautifully articulates through story the widening gulf between American ideals and reality. He has earned a place in a lineage of authors that includes Robert Stone, Joan Didion, Graham Greene, and John LeCarré.
Fountain’s contributions to our literature have not gone unnoticed. His books have received the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/ Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and a Whiting Award, among many other honors. His novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Fountain graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1980, having studied under some of the brightest lights in the Creative Writing Program: Doris Betts, Marianne Gingher, and Louis Rubin.
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