ISSUED: 12 November 2019
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — As part of its free lecture series, the Scarborough Society of Shepherd University will sponsor a program featuring Dr. Carrie Messenger, associate professor of English, on Tuesday, November 19, at 7 p.m. in the Scarborough Library Reading Room. Messenger will discuss her award-winning collection of short stories, “In the Amber Chamber,” in which fairy tales and speculative fiction intersect with the hard facts of Eastern European history. A dessert reception will follow the presentation.
Messenger served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova and resided in Romania on a Fulbright grant. She was named a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and The MacDowell Colony, and her work has appeared in Ecotone, Fairy Tale Review, and Witness. Messenger received her B.A. from Yale University, M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has been a faculty member in Shepherd’s Department of English and Modern Languages since 2010.
The winner of the 2017 Brighthorse Prize for Short Fiction, “In the Amber Chamber” includes a series of political fables taking place in various locations, including Eastern Europe, Kansas, and even other planets. Its characters include Peace Corps volunteers, childless parents, Hansel and Gretel, former rural farmworkers, Dust Bowl survivors, and immigrants in Chicago. Like the work of Kelly Link and Angela Carter, “In the Amber Chamber” reframes our understanding of the word “story.”
The Scarborough Society is a friends of the library organization sponsored by the Shepherd University Foundation. Annual membership dues help support library acquisitions, technology, and programs. Membership is open to all interested supporters of the Scarborough Library. For further information about the lecture series or the Scarborough Society, contact the Shepherd University Foundation at 304-876-5397 or visit shepherduniversityfoundation.org.
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