Visiting Writers Series: Best-Selling Author Wally Lamb

This reading, part of UNC Asheville’s Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to everyone at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 29 in Highsmith Student Union, Blue Ridge Room.

Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times best-selling novels. His first two, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, were No. 1 New York Times bestsellers, New York Times Notable Books of the Year, featured titles of Oprah’s Book Club, and between them, have been translated in 18 languages. I Know This Much Is True was adapted for an HBO mini-series.

Lamb has said of his fiction, “Although my characters’ lives don’t much resemble my own, what we share is that we are imperfect people seeking to become better people. I write fiction so that I can move beyond the boundaries and limitations of my own experiences and better understand the lives of others. That’s also why I teach. As challenging as it sometimes is to balance the two vocations, writing and teaching are, for me, intertwined.”

Lamb was in the ninth year of his 25-year career teaching high school English in his native Connecticut when he began to write fiction. And for the past 20 years, he has extended his teaching into Connecticut’s York Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison for women. Lamb’s writing workshop there has led him to edit and gain publication for two anthologies of the women’s autobiographical essays: Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters and I’ll Fly Away. Lamb was also associate professor at the University of Connecticut, where he directed the English Department’s creative writing program.

Lamb is UNC Asheville’s Goodman Endowed Visiting Writer for fall 2019.

Upcoming Visiting Writers Series Events

Nov. 14 – Poet Jericho Brown

Click here for building accessibility information.

Accessibility Contact: Highsmith Student Union, highsmithunion@unca.edu or 828.251.6990.

Visitor Parking on the UNC Asheville Campus – Visitors may park in faculty/staff and non-resident lots from 5:00 p.m. until 7:30 a.m., Monday through Friday, and on weekends, holidays, and campus breaks. Visitors are not permitted to park in resident student lots at any time.