MATC Matters

Led by an initiative from the English Department and the Creative Writing Committee, the Arts and Sciences Learning Center has agreed to be an institutional sponsor for this year’s Wisconsin Book Festival. The festival platform is a wonderful opportunity to reach out to a broad community of writers and readers, exposing them to the wealth of creative writing and literature courses offered at MATC.

As sponsors, we will be hosting an evening headline event at the Overture Center for the esteemed novelists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria and Zakes Mda from South Africa. Danile Kunene, a respected South African scholar at UW Madison, will introduce Mr. Mda. The event will take place on Friday October 12 at 5 p.m. Following will be a reception for the authors.

Mda and Adichie are both award-winning fiction writers, penning novels that eloquently and poignantly address the struggles of post-colonial Africa as they struggle to create a new cultural/political reality while coming to terms with the past. Not only do these authors offer us an opportunity to reach beyond our borders, but they also provide a point of inspiration to MATC’s wealth of immigrant and ethnic students.

That same Friday evening, at 7 p.m in. the Orpheum Theatre, MATC also will be hosting, T.C. Boyle, one of America’s most engaging and prolific fiction writers. Boyle’s reading will focus on his recent novel, The Tortilla Curtain, which poignantly addresses the delicate and explosive issue of illegal immigration.

Finally, on Sunday, October 14 at 4 - 5:45 p.m. at the DTEC campus, we are co-sponsoring the following event: “The Power and Healing of Personal Memoirs in African American Life.”
Local writers Alexander Gee Jr., Lilada Gee and Daphne Brown share their stories of tragedy in personal memoirs and the subsequent power and healing that resulted from writing about their lives.

The festival runs from October 10-14, so please consider engaging your classes/students in the readings. More info on the authors and events can be found on the Wisconsin Book Festival website. The Truax library has copies of Boyle’s, Mda’s and Adichie’s books. Closer to event time, we will be calling for volunteers to help set-up the hall, as well as staff information tables.

For more information, please contact Guy Thorvaldsen.