Award-winning, electric, knockout – doesn’t even begin to describe this highly stunning fiction writer who will be reading on February 25 at the WSU Museum of Art at 5 p.m.
Lauded by the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, People, Salon, Boston Globe (just to name a few) Justin Torres’s debut novel We the Animals has won more acclaim than most writers receive in a lifetime. It’s important to mention that The National Book Foundation named him one of 2012’s 5 Under 35. He has been the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. While such honors are meaningful and important, what makes Torres such a highly unique talent is the writing itself. Dorothy Alison claims, “Some books quicken your pulse. Some slow it. Some burn you inside and send you tearing off to find the author to see who made this thing that can so burn you and quicken you and slow you all at the same time. A miracle in concentrated pages, you are going to read it again and again.”
The thing about Torres is this: once you read his work, you want more, viscerally and intellectually. Dealing with social justice themes of poverty and racism, the imagistic sense of language he creates is both about hunger and perpetuates hunger, in the best literary sense. As Tayari Jones explains, “We the Animals marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in American Literature. In an intense coming-of-age story that brings to mind the early work of Jeffrey Eugenides and Sandra Cisneros, Torres’s concentrated prose goes down hot like strong liquor. His beautifully flawed characters worked their way into my heart on the very first page and have been there ever since.”
This third event in the WSU 2015-2016 Visiting Writer Series. The series is cosponsored by the WSU Common Reading Program, Charles R. Conner Museum of Natural History, College of Arts and Sciences, Columbia Chair in the History of the American West, Department of History, Center for Environmental Research, Education and Outreach (CEREO), the Honors College, and the Department of English at the University of Idaho. A common reading stamp for students is available for this event.
On March 23 the series will present Kevin Willmott at 5 p.m. in the WSU CUB Auditorium, and on April 21 the series will present Sean Thomas Dougherty at 5 p.m. in the WSU Museum of Art.
