STORRS, CT — Novelist Naeem Murr, the Fall 2007 Aetna Visiting Writer-in-Residence, will give a reading in The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26.
Murr is the author of three novels: The Boy (1998), The Genius of the Sea (2003), and The Perfect Man (2007).
The Boy, his first novel, was a New York Times Notable Book. It won a Lambda Literary Award and was translated into six languages.
His latest novel, The Perfect Man, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was long-listed for the 2006 Booker Prize.
Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Murr has lived in the United States since his early 20s.
He uses his knowledge of both countries to shape his stories. The Boy and The Genius of the Sea are set in London and its environs, while The Perfect Man is primarily set in the imaginary town of Pisgah, Mo.
Murr’s awards include a Stegner Fellowship, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He has also been a writer-in-residence at universities including the University of Missouri, Western Michigan University, and Northwestern University.
The Aetna Visiting Writer-in-Residence Program began in 2003 with funding from the Aetna Chair in Writing. It invites nationally or internationally-known writers to campus for several days.
Each resident writer gives a public reading, holds question-and-answer sessions with the campus community, teaches master classes in creative writing, meets with student writers in intensive one-on-one tutorials, and shares meals with faculty and students.
The Creative Writing Program usually hosts two Aetna Writers-in-Residence a year, one a poet and one a prose writer.
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