Nationally acclaimed novelist to feature in ASU writing conference
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
SAN ANGELO, Texas (Concho Valley Homepage) — Angelo State University will feature award-winning novelist and short-story writer Manuel Munoz as the featured speaker for the 27th ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton.
The conference will be held from Thursday, Feb. 29, to Friday, March 1, in the C.J. Davidson Center inside ASU’s Houston Harte University Center at 1910 Rosemont Drive.
During the conference, Munoz will give attendees two free public presentations:
9:30 a.m. — “A Conversation with Manuel Munoz”
7 p.m. — “Reading and Presentation by Manuel Munoz”
The conference will also include seven free public sessions, including readings and presentations done by 21 guest authors and poets in attendance. These sessions will be held in the Eldon Black Recital Hall inside the Carr Education-Fine Arts Building at 2602 Dena Drive.
Also a professor of the University of Arizona’s English department, Munoz is the author of the novel “What You See in the Dark” as well as the “Zigzagger” and “The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue” short story collections. Many of Munoz’s short stories have also appeared in the New York Times, Epoch, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, ZYZZYVA and Electric Literature as well as “The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature” and “The Heath Anthology of American Literature.”
SAPD receives award for compliance to ‘best practices’
“The Consequences,” his most recent short story collection, was published in the United States and the United Kingdom and was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It is slated to be translated into Italian and Turkish.
Among his many honors and awards, Munoz has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has also been recognized with a Whiting Writers Award, three O. Henry Awards and two selections in Best American Short Stories as well as the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He was honored in October 2023 with a MacArthur Fellowship for “depicting with empathy and nuance the Mexican-American communities of California’s Central Valley.”
A native of Dinuba, Calif., and a first-generation college graduate, Munoz holds a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature and language from Harvard University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Cornell University.
The ASU Writers Conference is dedicated to San Angelo’s own best-selling Western author, Elmer Kelton. The author of more than 40 books, Kelton was a seven-time winner of the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award and was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor at ASU before his passing in 2009. The conference is hosted by the Natalie Zan Ryan Department of English and Modern Languages and sponsored by the university with support from the ASU Alumni Association, College of Arts and Humanities and Guy and Eva Choate.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ConchoValleyHomepage.com.
