David Foster Wallace
The University of Arizona's Prose Series and Sonora Review will present a tribute to MFA program alumnus David Foster Wallace.
Wallace, who passed in September of 2008, was the groundbreaking author of fiction and nonfiction works, including "Infinite Jest," "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."
His third and unfinished final novel, "The Pale King," will be published in spring 2010 by Little, Brown.
The May 1 tribute will consists of two panel discussions: "Reading David Foster Wallace" will be held at at 2 p.m.; "David Foster Wallace and His Influences" will be held at 3:30 p.m. The tribute will conclude with an 8 p.m. reading of Wallace's works.
"We want to provide a forum for reading and understanding David Foster Wallace's work," said Aurelie Sheehan, director of the UA Creative Writing MFA program. "He was profoundly original, a seminal figure, and his work really shifted the conversation in American letters."
All events are free and open to the public and will be held at the UA Poetry Center, which is located at the Helen S. Schaefer Building, 1508 East Helen Street.
Panelists and readers include Tom Bissell, author of "The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam," Charles Bock, author of "Beautiful Children", Marshall Boswell who authored "Understanding David Foster Wallace" and others. Wallace's literary agent, Bonnie Nadell, will also be in attendance.
The weekend coincides with the release of the new issue of student-run literary journal Sonora Review, which includes a tribute to Wallace and an uncollected story he originally published in a 1987 edition of the Review.
The journal's editor-in-chief, UA master's of fine arts student Michael Sheehan began work on the tribute issue last year.
"I wanted to do a tribute feature to his work – an act, statement and gift of gratitude, respect, and admiration – since the beginning of my time with the journal, and it has been an amazing privilege to have had the chance to do so," Sheehan said.
"I hope that this tribute can help keep Wallace's work focal in the ongoing conversation," he said. "I hope it will help to draw new readers to his work, and to help encourage others to spread the word about his importance."
Wallace's first novel, "The Broom of the System," was published in 1987, the year he graduated from the UA MFA program. A collection of stories, "Girl with Curious Hair," came out in 1989; he worked on many of the stories in that collection while he was at the UA. The best-known of his novels, "Infinite Jest," is partially set in Tucson and was published in 1996. The next year, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
In a remembrance of his work, The Los Angeles Times called him "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." Most recently, Wallace held the Roy E. Disney Chair at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.
"I think that Wallace is misunderstood in the same way that Hemingway is misunderstood," Aurelie Sheehan added.
"There is Hemingway, and there is the myth of Hemingway. Similarly, people seem to think they know David Foster Wallace's work before they read it," she said. "He's known as a postmodern guy who wrote in a maximalist style, but his values were profoundly traditional."
Free and open to the public