Author, journalist Melissa Fay Greene to deliver 20th Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture at UGA
Athens, Ga. – Acclaimed
author and journalist Melissa Fay Greene will deliver the 20th Ferdinand
Phinizy Lecture April 19 at 1:30 p.m. in the University of Georgia
Chapel. Greene’s lecture on “The Literature of
Fact and Why Good Writing Still Matters” is free and open to the
public. A brief reception will follow.
“Like Melissa herself,
her writing is brilliantly sensitive to the hilarious as well as the
bittersweet. I am very grateful that she is joining the ranks of truly
gifted writers who have come to campus as Phinizy
lecturers,” said James C. Cobb, Phinizy Lecture committee chair and the
Spalding Distinguished Research Professor in the Franklin College of
Arts and Sciences department of history.
Greene was born in Macon
and spent her childhood in Ohio before returning to Georgia to make her
home in Atlanta. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and was recently
awarded an honorary doctorate from Emory
University. Two of her five books have been named finalists for the
National Book Award.
In 2011, Greene was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
Her first book, “Praying
for Sheetrock,” published in 1991, chronicled the struggle against
racism and political corruption in McIntosh County, Ga., well after the
Civil Rights movement supposedly had run its
course. In addition to being a National Book Award finalist, “Praying
for Sheetrock” received the Robert F. Kennedy and Lillian Smith Awards,
among others.
Greene’s next book, “The
Temple Bombing,” recounted the events leading up to the 1958 bombing of
Atlanta’s Temple, a reform Jewish synagogue, by anti-Semitic white
supremacists. Greene captured both the hatred
and suspicion that swirled around the bombing and the courage and
determination that transformed the tragedy into a symbol of
Jewish-African American cooperation in civil rights-era Atlanta. Also a
National Book Award finalist, “The Temple Bombing” received
the Southern Book Circle Critics Award, among others.
Greene’s most recent
book, “No Biking in the House Without a Helmet,” is a slice taken from
her life as parent reflecting on the experience of bringing nine
children born on three continents into the same household—and
all the laughter and occasional tears that happened along the way.
The Ferdinand Phinizy
Lectureship was established and endowed by Phinizy Calhoun, UGA class of
1900, as a memorial to his grandfather, Ferdinand Phinizy, who was a
graduate of the UGA class of 1838. From economist
John Kenneth Galbraith to novelists Walker Percy and Richard Ford, the
Phinizy Lectures have featured some of the nation’s most distinguished
writers and thinkers over their nearly 60-year span.
