Award-winning author Ben Fountain, a 1980 English/creative writing alumnus and a native of Chapel Hill, will read from his book, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, April 5 at 3:30 p.m. in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room of Wilson Library.
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara won Barnes & Noble’s Discover Award for Fiction at a recent ceremony in New York. Brief Encounters won the prestigious 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction. The book also is a finalist for the Stephen Turner Award for Best First Book of Fiction given by the Texas Institute of Letters.
Fountain’s fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review and Zoetrope: All-Story, and he has been awarded an O. Henry Prize and two Pushcart Prizes. He is the fiction editor of Southwest Review and lives with his wife and their two children in Dallas, Texas.
Bookmarks Magazine writes of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: “Tales of Americans subsisting in the third world and discovering new ways to think and behave are commonplace. But Ben Fountain’s lively, humorous treatment of his troubled characters earns generous praise. … The author uses his literary prowess to examine the uncomfortable complexities of life outside the United States.”
Fountain says in an interview on the Barnes and Noble Discover Award Web site that the book that most influenced his life or career as a writer was ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound, a book he discovered while a student at UNC.
“This book came into my hands during my sophomore year in college. I was taking Doris Betts’ fiction writing class at Chapel Hill, and she’d put about 20 books on the reserved list for us to go in and have a look. Somehow, I ended up with ABC of Reading one day, and it was a revelation, I suppose in the same way that a slap in the face can be a revelation. … The world opened up for me with that book.”
For more information on Fountain’s April 5 reading, contact Jenne Herbst, (919) 962-4000, jlherbst@email.unc.edu.
