Pulitzer Prize-winning author to speak at annual dinner
Pulitzer Prize-winning author to speak at annual dinner
Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage, will speak at the annual dinner of the University of Delaware Library Associates at 7 p.m., Wednesday, May 1, at Arsht Hall in Wilmington.
Her presentation is entitled "On the Biographical Trail: In Search of Véra Nabokov."
The evening events begin at 6 p.m., with a cash bar with hors d'ouevres, followed by dinner and the program. The event is open to the public with a dinner reservation.
Véra, published by Random House in 1999, depicts the relationship between the widely esteemed author Vladimir Nabokov and his wife, who was his muse.
"Without my wife," the author of Lolita, Pale Fire and Speak Memory, said, "I wouldn't have written a single novel."
The Nabokovs 52-year marriage is a love story and there is a fascinating and brilliant woman at its core. A critic in The New York Times wrote, "Schiff has succeeded in creating an elegantly nuanced portrait of the artist's wife, showing us just how pivotal Nabokov's marriage was to his hermetic existence and how it indelibly shaped his work...a formidable challenge for a biographer–a challenge that Ms. Schiff, with this book, has most persuasively met."
Educated at Phillips Academy and Williams College, Schiff was a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, which she left to write Saint Exupéry: A Biography, published by Knopf in 1994. It was a 1995 Pulitzer Prize finalist and received numerous awards abroad.
Her essays and articles were published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. Schiff is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Prices for the dinner are $68 per person for Library Associates members, $88 per person for guests (which includes a first-year Library Associate membership) and $700 for a corporate table of eight persons. Each dinner admission includes a $25 tax-deductible contribution. Corporate sponsorship to assist with the evening's expenses has been generously supported by the Wilmington Trust Co.
To request a printed invitation, send name and mailing address, via e-mail, to UDLA@udel.edu or call 831-2231.
