News Article

The Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series welcomes fiction writer Bharati Mukherjee (Ba-ra-tee, Moo-ker-chjee), who will read from her work at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 6, in the Globe Room of Cataldo Hall on the GU campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The series is sponsored by Gonzaga’s English department, Gonzaga’s office of intercultural relations, and Humanities Washington. The series is exceptionally strong this school year thanks to a $7,500 Humanities Washington grant awarded to GU English Associate Professor Tod Marshall, who directs the series.

Mukherjee, an English professor at the University of California at Berkeley, earned a doctorate at the University of Iowa. The author calls herself “an American of Bengali-Indian origin,” having grown up in India, Europe, Canada and the United States. She has written several novels, including “The Tiger’s Daughter,” “Jasmine,” and “The Tree Bride,” and a memoir, “Days and Nights in Calcutta.” She often writes about immigration and the experience of female Asian immigrants in the United States and Canada.

So far this academic year, the series has featured writers Herman Asarnow (Sept. 18, 2007); Donald Revell (Oct. 9, 2007); and Joy Harjo (Nov. 14, 2007). Next up in the series, after Mukherjee, is former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, who is scheduled to speak at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Feb. 25, also in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room. The final writer in this year’s series lineup is poet Daniel Butterworth, a Gonzaga English professor, who will read from his work at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 26, in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room.

For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Tod Marshall at (509) 323-6681 or via e-mail.