Purchase College Presents Authors Kirstin Valdez Quade & Justin Torres

Purchase College-SUNY will present Kirstin Valdez Quade and Justin Torres: Readings and Conversations on Monday, October 10, 2016 from 4:30 – 6:00 pm. The program, which is free of charge and open to the public, will take place in the Humanities Lecture Hall, Room 1032, at Purchase College (735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY). Featuring two of the literary scene’s most exciting young authors, the event is part of the Durst Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings leading writers to the Westchester community.

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, a collection of short stories that won the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, The Southern Review, and The Best American Short Stories. Justin Torres’s first novel, We the Animals, has been translated into 15 languages and received the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Both Quade and Torres have received the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” recognition, an annual prize that honors five young and promising fiction writers.

“Kirstin Valdez Quade's writing is elegantly controlled and exuberantly alive,” says Anthony Domestico, assistant professor of literature at Purchase College. “Her short stories explore the mysteries of the American southwest, the power of what she has called ‘miracle-laden Hispanic Catholicism,’ and the wildness of character and life more generally. Her first collection, Night at the Fiestas, does what all good literature should do: it opens up a space for thought and wonder.”

He adds, “Justin Torres's debut novel, We the Animals, is a singular work of fiction, and Torres is a singular talent. He writes with the poet's sense of rhythm and the novelist's sense that families are the most beautiful and the most harmful things we will ever know.”

Mehdi Tavana Okasi, assistant professor of creative writing at Purchase, comments, “Torres and Quade both made astonishing debuts with their novel and collection of stories respectively. In finely crafted and achingly beautiful narratives, Torres and Quade explore the complicated, passionate, and often sorrowed intimacies that haunt our hearts and our imaginations. We look forward to an afternoon of readings and conversation with these talented writers.”

For more information on the event, please visit http://news.purchase.edu/oct-10-kirstin-valdez-quade-and-justin-torres-readings-and-conversations/ or call 914.251.6550.

The Durst Distinguished Lecture Series and the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature are funded by the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature Endowment. The mission of the Durst programs is to infuse the experience and intellect of leading writers into the Purchase community, while providing diverse opportunities for these writers to interact with students and influence campus life.

Poet Claudia Rankine—who was recently named a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” award—is Purchase College’s 2016-17 Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature. In this position, Rankine will lead numerous programs throughout the academic year, including readings and workshops.

The 2016-17 Durst Distinguished Lecture Series will also present other acclaimed and upcoming writers, next featuring Alexander Chee and Garth Greenwell on October 27.