LEWISTON, ID – Kim Barnes, who is an author from Idaho, is speaking at the 43rd annual Stegner Lecture. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place on the second floor of the Lewiston City Library (411 D Street) on April 4 at 7 p.m.
Barnes will speak on “The Unknown World: Stegner and the Wilderness of Grief,” looking at her relationship with the physical and psychological territories in which she resides, as outlined by the annual lecture’s theme.
Barnes spent her childhood in the logging camps along the North Fork of Idaho’s Clearwater River. Her first memoir, “In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award for Nonfiction. She also is the author of a second memoir, “Hungry for the World,” and three novels: “Finding Caruso,” set in the fictional town of Snake Junction, Idaho (which locals might recognize as 1960s Lewiston), “A Country Called Home,” winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction, and “In the Kingdom of Men,” a story set in the American oil camps of Saudi Arabia, which was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Her essays, poems, and stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, The Best of Oprah Magazine, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. A recipient of the Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a University of Idaho Distinguished Professor Emerita, she lives with her husband, poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.
Barnes last delivered the Stegner Lecture in 2013. She is an alumna of LC State and taught in the LC State creative writing program.
The Stegner Lecture is named after Wallace Stegner and has been an area literary-cultural highlight since Stegner gave the first lecture in 1982. Stegner has often been called “The Dean of Western Writers” and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
For more information on the talk visit www.lcsc.edu/humanities/