Enid Shomer

UNC Asheville will host an evening with renowned author Enid Shomer at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 12, at UNC Asheville's Laurel Forum, Karpen Hall. Shomer, who has been named UNC Asheville's 2007 P.B. Parris Visiting Writer, will read from her recent works. The event is free and open to the public.

A widely published writer who is well known for both her fiction and her poetry, Shomer is the author of four collections of poetry, including "Black Drum" and "Stalking the Florida Panther," which won the Washington Prize. Her most recent book, "Tourist Season," offers ten stories of women aged 17 to 70. She is currently working on a historical novel set in Egypt in 1849. Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert are the protagonists.

Shomer has received a number of awards, including the Iowa Fiction Prize and the LSU/Southern Review Prize, both given annually for the best first collection of short fiction by an American author. Her stories, poems and essays have been included in more than 50 anthologies and textbooks, including "Poetry: A HarperCollins Pocket Anthology."

Shomer's visit is made possible by an endowment established by the friends of P.B. Parris, a retired UNC Asheville creative writing professor and author of "Waltzing in the Attic."

For more information, call the Literature and Language Department at 828/251-6603.