Writer Rand Richards Cooper to Give Oct. 7 Reading at Westminster School

Westminster School will kick off its Friday Nights in Gund series of readings and concerts Oct. 7 with a reading by fiction and nonfiction writer Rand Richards Cooper. The student reader will be senior Sarah Minella, the winner of the school’s Brian Ford Writing Prize in May.

Cooper has been a film reviewer, book reviewer and essayist for Commonweal for more than a decade. He also is the author of two works of fiction, “The Last to Go” and “Big As Life,” and has taught at Amherst and Emerson colleges. An intrepid travel writer, he won the 2002 Lowell Thomas Gold Medal award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He has written for Bon Appétit and The New York Times.

Cooper’s Westminster School reading is free and open to the public and will begin at 7 p.m. in the Gund Reading Room of the school’s Armour Academic Center. The school is located at 995 Hopmeadow St. in Simsbury. Refreshments will be served after the presentation and ample parking will be available in the parking lot adjacent to Armour Academic Center.

The Friday Nights in Gund series is made possible by generous grants from The Ensign Bickford Foundation and the Ford-Goldfarb English Department Enrichment Fund.