Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBC Radio’s Writers & Company, will explore The Lives of Writers during her presentation as the featured speaker for the University of Lethbridge’s F.E.L. Priestley Lecture Series.
Her talk, which is open to the public, will be held Thursday, January 17, 2019 from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. in the 1st Choice Savings Centre for Sport and Wellness, room PE250.
In this lecture, Wachtel will discuss the appetite for literary biography and how greater knowledge of a writer’s life affects a reader’s appreciation of a writer’s work. Drawing on her experience as host of Writers and Company, she will present specific instances of how writers reveal what is most important to them, as well as the way in which writers function as outside commentators on their own societies.
Wachtel was born in Montreal and studied English at McGill University. She has been the host of CBC Radio’s Writers & Company since its inception in 1990, as well as the host of Wachtel on the Arts since 2007. Five books of her interviews have been published, including Random Illuminations, a book of reflections, correspondence and conversations with Carol Shields, which won the Independent Publisher Book Award. She has earned numerous accolades for her contributions to Canadian cultural life, including nine honorary degrees from universities across Canada and Officer of the Order of Canada. Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, has called Wachtel “one of the finest interviewers of authors.”
About the F.E.L. Priestley Lecture Series
The F.E.L. Priestley Lecture was endowed in 1987, in memory of professor Priestley, whose 50-year academic career began as a teacher in a one-room school in Pine Coulee, and ended when he retired from University College, University of Toronto, in 1972.
The purpose of the lecture series is to invite internationally renowned scholars and authors to campus to further the tradition of the humane letters, in particular in the disciplines of the history of ideas, literature, philosophy and history. It provides an opportunity to advance the humanist tradition and intellectual values that professor Priestley cherished and promoted in his works and in the classroom.
To view online: ulethbridge.ca/artsci/wachtel
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Trevor Kenney, News & Information Manager
403-329-2710
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Dr. Goldie Morgentaler, Department of English
403-329-2365
goldie.morgentaler@uleth.ca
