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In Person – Marilynne Robinson
December 4, 2021 @ 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Tulsa City-County Library, the Tulsa Library Trust and Magic City Books are proud to welcome Marilynne Robinson, recipient of the 2020 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award for an in-person public presentation on Saturday December 4 at 10:30 am.
The program will be held in the Pocahontas Greadington Learning & Creativity Center at Central Library, 5th and Denver in downtown Tulsa.
The Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award is an annual award given by the Tulsa Library Trust and Tulsa City-County Library. Its purpose is to give formal recognition, on behalf of the Tulsa County community, to internationally acclaimed authors who have written a distinguished body of work and made a major contribution to the field of literature and letters.
Marilynne Robinson, American novelist and essayist, is the winner of the 2020 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. Robinson was the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by former President Bararck Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.”
Robinson began her prestigious career in 1980 with the publication of her first novel, Housekeeping, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. She is best-known for her bestselling historical fiction Gilead series, which includes: Gilead (2004), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Award; Lila, (2014), a National Book Award finalist, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and a Man Booker Prize nominee; and Jack, (2020) named a best book of the year by NPR, Time, Esquire, The Gaurdian, Lit Hub and others.
Robinson’s nonfiction titles include: What Are We Doing Here?: Essays; The Givenness of Things: Essays; When I Was a Child I Read Books, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Magazine Best Book of the Year; Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness From the Modern Myth of the Self; The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought; and Mother Country, which was nominated for a National Book Award.
Other accolades and honors received by Robinson include South Korea’s 2013 Pak Kyong-ni Prize for her contribution to International Literature, the 2016 Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award in American Fiction and the 2016 Dayton Peace Prize’s Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.
Robinson, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa, taught at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop for 25 years. She lives in Iowa City.
