Award-winning author Andrea Barrett to speak Wednesday

National Book Award-winning novelist and short story-writer Andrea Barrett will speak at Skidmore at 8 p.m. Wednesday, February 28, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Barrett will read from her fiction and respond to questions. 

Barrett won the National Book Award in 1997 for her book Ship Fever and went on from there to bring out two later acclaimed works: Servants of the Map, a collection of short fiction (featured in "Best American Stories" and the "O'Henry Prize Collection"), and a novel titled The Voyage of the Narwhal.

In all, Barrett is the author of five published novels and two volumes of stories. She has been awarded a MacArthur "genius" award, and now teaches fiction-writing at William College.

George Garrett in the New York Times Book Review says of Barrett, "Her work features a magical wedding of the truths, the ways and means, of science and story-telling. The result of this happy marriage is brilliant and highly original work." The New Yorker writes, "Her work is quietly devastating: as with everything she writes, you enter right into it, and cannot ever leave it behind."

Barrett's appearance is sponsored by the Department of English.