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News Release
Office of News and Information
212 Whitehead Hall / 3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-2692
Phone: (410) 516-7160 / Fax (410) 516-5251
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November 14, 1996
CONTACT: Leslie Rice
lnr@resource.ca.jhu.edu
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Pulitzer Prize Winner Richard Ford
to Give Pouder Lecture at Hopkins
Richard Ford, winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for his
novel, Independence Day, will deliver the G. Harry
Pouder Lecture at The Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus,
Friday, Dec. 6 at 8 p.m. in Shriver Hall, 3400 N. Charles St. in
Baltimore. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Ford's 1995 witty and powerful novel, Independence
Day, won not only this year's Pulitzer Prize but also the
prestigious PEN-Faulkner Award for Fiction. He is author of
several other critically acclaimed novels, including
The Sportswriter, Wildlife, Rock Springs and The
Ultimate Good Luck.
Independence Day is set during Fourth of July
weekend in Haddam, N.J., a town Ford modeled after Princeton,
N.J. Frank Bascombe, the main character of Ford's earlier work,
The Sportswriter, is back, this time no
longer a sportswriter, but a successful real estate agent
struggling to deal with his divorce and a son beginning to get
into trouble with the law. In the novel, father and son take a
trip where they visit all the major sports museums they
can drive to in two days. Bascombe tries to teach his son the
essence of independence and to find the vocabulary to tell his
son he loves him. The book combines humor with sadness and is
made powerful through the voice of Frank Bascombe, a character
readers will find easy to relate to as he attempts to
cope with his regrets of the past and his reluctance to meet
problems head-on.
The Pouder Lectureship honors the late G. Harry Pouder,
executive vice president of the Baltimore Association, who died
in 1971. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Evening College (now the
School of Continuing Studies), Pouder wrote several plays and was
active in the Homewood Playshop, now Theatre Hopkins. Previous
Pouder lecturers have included Tom Stoppard, William Styron,
John le Carre, Larry McMurtry and Ray Bradbury.
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http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/
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