Award-Winning Author Featured at Annual Writer's Conference

Angelo State University will host award-winning author Dan Chaon as the featured speaker at the 19^th annual Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton on Thursday, Jan 29, in the Houston Harte University Center, 1910 Rosemont Drive.

The annual conference, which focuses on a nationally known author of fiction, poetry, nonfiction or drama, is free and open to the public and will be held in the University Center’s C.J. Davidson Conference Center.

The two-part program will include “A Conversation with Dan Chaon” at 9:30 a.m. conducted by Dr. Terry Dalrymple, an ASU professor of English. Chaon will then give a presentation and public reading at 7 p.m. There will be book signings after both events. 

The Delaney Associate Professor of Creative Writing and co-director of the Creative Writing Program at Oberlin College in Ohio, Chaon is the author of three short story collections and two novels. He received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. Born in Nebraska and educated in Chicago, Chaon received a Bachelor of Arts from Northwestern University in 1986 and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Syracuse University in 1990.

More information about Chaon and his writing is available online at http://danchaon.com.

The annual ASU Writers Conference is named for author Elmer Kelton, who died in 2009. He is the author of more than 40 books, including “The Time it Never Rained,” “The Man Who Rode Midnight” and “The Good Old Boys,” and was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor at ASU. He was a seven-time winner of the Western Writers of America’s (WWA) Spur Award and was named the WWA “all-time best western author.” He also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association and the Barbara McCombs/Lon Tinkle Award from the Texas Institute of Letters.

The ASU conference is sponsored by the university and hosted by the Department of English and Modern Languages.

For more information about the Writers Conference, contact Dr. Chris Ellery, ASU professor of English, at 325-486-6142 or go online to www.angelo.edu/writers_conference.