Award-winning writer and Acuff Chair Huddle to read at APSU Feb. 12

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – At 8 p.m. on Feb. 12, the acclaimed writer David Huddle will read from his upcoming novel, “The Faulkes Chronicle,” at the Austin Peay State University Morgan University Center, room 303.

Huddle, a two-time National Endowment of the Arts Fellow, has spent the past year at APSU as the 2012-13 Acuff Chair of Excellence. In 1985, country music legend Roy Acuff generously endowed the chair at APSU, which brings nationally acclaimed artists to campus each year to work with students and the community.

Huddle is the author of more than 17 books of poetry, fiction and essays, and his work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and the Best American Short Stories. A Publisher’s Weekly review of his debut novel, “The Story of a Million Years,” stated that Huddle’s “view of the human condition brims with wisdom, compassion and a rare grace.”

He previously served as distinguished visiting professor of creative writing at Hollins University, which offers one of the country’s premier Master of Fine Arts programs, in addition to being on the faculty of the famed Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

Last fall, the Library of Virginia presented him with the 2012 Emyl Jenkins Sexton Literary Award for Fiction. Judges for the award commented that Huddle’s novel, “Nothing Can Make Me Do This,” was written with “compelling honesty, humor and grace.” Noted writer Julia Alvarez said the novel “gives us not just a glimpse, but that rare revelatory and redeeming experience of seeing and becoming” the characters in the book, “which is why we read and need novels.”

The Feb. 12 reading, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a book signing.

For more information on the reading or this year’s Acuff Chair of Excellence, contact the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at 221-7876.