Dominican’s Siena Center to host acclaimed author Mary Gordon Oct. 27

Dominican University’s Siena Center will host a lecture by author Mary Gordon on Thursday, October 27 at 7:00 p.m. in the Martin Recital Hall, 7900 Division Street, River Forest.

Gordon will speak about her book Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels, which recounts her two-year experience in reading the gospels in the way she would read a story. For Gordon, the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College, that meant reading them repeatedly, with a critical eye for literary insight and in multiple languages and translations.

Gordon, a practicing Catholic, was inspired to write the book in response to what she perceived as an uptick of religious fundamentalism in America. When thinking about the issue, she realized that she’d never read the gospels from beginning to end. She resolved to apply her intellectual reading skills to determine the emotional appeal of the gospel.

She has written several novels, story collections and nonfiction works, including Pearl: a Novel, her memoir The Shadow Man: A Daughter’s Search For Her Father and her latest novel The Love of My Youth. Her writing has garnered her three O. Henry Awards for short stories, an Academy Award for Literature and the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award.

Admission is $10. For more information or tickets, contact the Siena Center at (708) 714-9105.

Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s degrees through the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences and master’s degrees through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Brennan School of Business, the School of Education, the Graduate School of Social Work, and the School of Continuing Studies. The university also offers a doctoral degree in library and information science. In the 2012 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report ranked Dominican University in the top 20 of Midwest master’s level universities. The magazine also ranked Dominican as one of three “Great Schools at a Great Price” in Illinois.