Newsroom

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Fiction writer Sarah Shun-lien Bynum will read at Oregon State University on Friday, April 25, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Valley Library rotunda. A question and answer session and book signing will follow.

This event is part of OSU's 2013-2014 Visiting Writers Series.

Bynum is the author of two novels. "Ms. Hempel Chronicles," (Harcourt 2008) was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and "Madeleine Is Sleeping," (Harcourt 2004) won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Novelist Jonathan Franzen says, "Bynum seems incapable of writing a sentence that doesn't have something fresh or funny or true going on in it. She gets you laughing and then she whacks you in the heart." 

In 2010, The New Yorker magazine named Bynum a top "20 Under 40" fiction writer. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and "Best American Short Stories" (2004 and 2009).

Bynum lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Otis College.

The Visiting Writers Series brings nationally-known writers to Oregon State University. The program is made possible by support from The Valley Library, OSU Press, the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film, the College of Liberal Arts, Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele, and Grass Roots Books and Music.