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 Herbst Theatre

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George Saunders

MacArthur Fellow   In conversation with Charles Bock

Monday, October 6, 2008 |  Herbst Theatre, 8pm

Master of the short story, George Saunders said in a 2006 interview with Daytrotter, "My natural tendency is to race for the door. I know what to do in a short story… If I know something's only going to be eight pages, it accommodates my indecisiveness." Indecision aside, Saunders' work earned him a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006, the prize informally dubbed the "genius grant." Saunders' eclectic past - his jobs range from roofer in Chicago, to guitarist in a country-western band, to knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse - has fostered a wild and wry creative streak. Wickedly funny, his first collection of short stories, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, follows a cast of characters fettered by consumerism, modern decay and a disheartening status quo. Saunders infuses his settings, both fictional and real, with a veneer of absurdity: from a crumbling Civil War theme park to the fantastical landscape of Dubai. His latest book, Braindead Megaphone, is a collection of essays that retain an undercurrent of optimism beneath a withering critique of everything from skirmishes between illegal immigrants and Minutemen at the U.S. border to the inertia of a media circus. His work appears regularly in Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. Saunders teaches at Syracuse University.

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