Winners Of Texas Tech President's Book Awards To Explain Writing, Publication Process In Free Panel Discussion

Written by: Christy Hammett

Three award-winning Texas Tech University authors will discuss their research and the writing process during the third fall installment of the Presidential Lecture & Performance Series.

The event will take place at 3:30 p.m., Oct. 30 at the Merket Alumni Center on the Texas Tech campus. Both the panel and the reception to follow are free and open to the public.

"Researchers, artists, writers and scholars of the highest quality can be found among the faculty at Texas Tech University," said Mary Jane Hurst, performance series organizer and faculty assistant to the president. "This panel is comprised of the three authors whose books received the most recent President’s Book Award at Texas Tech."

Panelists include:

• Gary Forsythe - first-place winner, author of "A Critical History of Early Rome;" details the events of Rome’s history, from its Stone Age to the First Punic War in 264 B.C. The history of this period is notoriously difficult to summarize because there are not many existing records, and those that did survive are biased and highlight only the accomplishments of Rome.

• Hafid Gafaiti- author of "The Diasporization of Postcolonial Literature;" shows that several factors (colonization, immigration, writing in French, civil wars, questions of identity, failure of national literatures, exile of writers, and constitution of new diasporas) require that we now acknowledge the process of diasporization of postcolonial literature.

• Stephen Graham Jones- author of "Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories." Gafaiti and Jones tied for second place. "Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories," the life of an Indian in modern America is as rich in irony as it is in tradition. A noted Blackfeet writer, Jones offers a nuanced and often biting look at the lives of Native peoples from the inside.

CONTACT: Mary Jane Hurst, faculty assistant to the president, Texas Tech University, (806) 742-2121 or maryjane.hurst@ttu.edu.