NEW YORK STATE WRITERS INSTITUTE

Robert Coover

September 12, 1996 (Thursday), 8 p.m.
Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
University at Albany's Uptown Campus

Afternoon Seminar, 4:00 p.m., in LC 25

Robert Coover has been hailed by The New York Times as "a one-man Big Bang of exploding creative force." His latest novel, John's Wife, was released in April 1996 on the thirtieth anniversary of his first novel The Origin of the Brunists (1966) which won the William Faulkner Award for the best first novel. Coover's other works include the novels The Public Burning (1977), a "factional" account of the conviction and execution in 1953 of alleged spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Gerald's Party (1986), and Pinocchio in Venice (1991); and the short story collections Picksongs and Descants (1969), In Bed One Night and Other Brief Encounters (1983), and A Night at the Movies (1987) which won the Rea Award for the Short Story.

Coover, respected and praised for his versatility and inventiveness, produces works which blur the distinction between fantasy and reality. Time magazine's Paul Gray said that Coover has won a "reputation as an avant-gardist who can do with reality what a magician does with a pack of cards: shuffle the familiar into unexpected patterns."

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Coover is an instructor at Brown University. At Brown he teaches a workshop in Hypertext Fiction, making use of modern computer technology to create nonlinear, nonsequential writing using hypertext linkages.