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Sylvia Plath Event in Tennessee on 31 July

Linebaugh offers summer lecture series on husband-wife authors

Linebaugh Public Library will host Bookends: Summer Lecture Series beginning June 12 and running though Aug. 14. This series provides an in-depth study of contemporary literature for readers who want to delve a little deeper than the typical book discussion group.

The theme of this years’s series is husband and wife authors, such as Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss. The MTSU faculty lecturers will consider how husband and wife authors, who, although they do not write together, influence each other’s work.

“They may or may not relate, that’s part of the lecture discussion,” said Linebaugh Library Assistant Director Rita Shacklett, “How different are they? How alike are they?”

Library Director Laurel Best works with MTSU faculty members in putting together the Bookends: Summer Lecture Series, which is now in its second year.

“Whether you’ve read the book or not, the lectures will be entertaining and enlightening,” Best said. “Last year’s series lead me to a greater appreciation of a book I’d read but hadn’t liked but I also learned enough about one particularly well-received book to know it wasn’t for me.”

All the lectures begin at 7:30 in the second floor reading room at Linebaugh Library, 105 W vine St., Murfreesboro

June 12 If I Were Me by Clark Blaise and The Middleman and other stories by Bharati Mukherjee – Lecturer: Professor Robert Lawrence

June 26 Final Solution by Michael Chabon and Love and other impossible pursuits by Ayelet Waldman – Lecturer: Instructor Sandra Cavender

July 17 Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris and Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich – Lecturer: Prof. Clifton Kaiser

July 31 Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes and Ariel by Sylvia Plath – Lecturer: Professor Deborah Gentry

August 7 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and History of Love by Nicole Krauss – Lecturer: Master’s student Aaron Shapiro

August 14 Eva by Peter Dickinson and Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley – Lecturer: Professor Jennifer Marchant

Last year’s lectures focused on National Book Award winners, and featured the works of Joan Didion, Andrea Barrett, Orlando Patterson, Polly Horvath, Carlos Eire and Tim O’Brien.

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