The Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West VirginiaUniversity, will featuring a discussion with author Meredith Sue Willis and a reading from her latest novel, Oradell at Sea , Saturday, Nov 2, at 4 p.m., in the Mountainlair Gluck Theater.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Universitys Mountaineer Week celebration of the states cultural heritage. JoAnn Dadisman, a faculty member in the WVU Department of English, will conduct a discussion with Willis to accompany the reading. A reception and book signing will follow the event.
A West Virginia native, Willis went to public school in Shinnston, where her father was her science teacher. Her mother was a part-time teacher and all four of her aunts and uncles were teachers.
She attended BucknellUniversity for two years, then spent a year as a Volunteer in Service to American (VISTA) in Norfolk, Va. She then attended BarnardCollege, where she was active in anti-war demonstrations.
She graduated from BarnardCollege with honors and was initiated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Willis then went on to earn a master of fine arts in creative writing from ColumbiaUniversity.
In 1971 she began working as a writer-in-residence with Teachers&Writers Collaborative, and her books on the teaching of writing are used by teachers around the nation. Though she has lived in New York and New Jersey for more than 30 years, Appalachia has never left her mind, or her writing. Her first two novels, A Space Apart and Higher Ground , are set in rolling hills of majestic West Virginia.
She was named a Distinguished Teaching Artist for 2000-2003 by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was the 1990 West Virginia Italia Heritage Festival Non-Italian Woman of the Year.
Her writing has garnered numerous awards that include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Literary Award of the West Virginia Library Association.
Her latest novel, Oradell at Sea , was released by the Vandalia Press imprint of the _ WVU Press_ in September. The novel takes place on a cruise ship, with flashbacks to the narrators fictional West Virginia hometown.