Margaret Atwood authored “Oryx and Crake,” the Common Reading Program novel assigned to St. Cloud State’s 2015-16 first-year students.
Award-winning author Margaret Atwood will lecture and sign books 7 p.m. Nov. 19 in Ritsche Auditorium.
The event is free with an ID for SCSU students and employees.
Only 100 tickets are available for the public. Purchase $10 general admission, will-call tickets at scsutickets.com.
Doors open 6:30 p.m. at the 904-seat auditorium in Stewart Hall. Parking is $1.50 an hour in the 4th Avenue Parking Ramp, 516 4th Ave. S., St. Cloud.
Atwood’s presentation, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session, will be simulcast to overflow spaces in Atwood Memorial Center and Miller Learning Resources Center.
A Canadian, Atwood is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, winning in 2000 for her historical novel “The Blind Assassin.”
Her “Oryx and Crake” (2003) is the Common Reading Program book for St. Cloud State’s 2015-16 first-year students. It is a post-apocalyptic, dystopian novel with themes that include genetic engineering, transhumanism and environmental degradation.
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Atwood, 75, earned the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987 for “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel about subjugated women in a military theocracy, set in the near future.
Atwood has published poetry, children’s books, non-fiction, short-fiction, libretti and television scripts.
She has received nearly 20 honorary degrees, from schools such as Harvard University and Bard College.
She invented a remote robotic writing technology called the LongPen, now marketed by Toronto-based Syngrafii, Inc.
Event sponsors include these St. Cloud State entities: Common Reading Program, SCSU Foundation, University Program Board and Miller Learning Resources Center.
