Best-Selling Author Luis Alberto Urrea to Discuss Works at Montclair State University

Award-winning, best-selling author, Luis Alberto Urrea will read from and talk about his works at two free events at Montclair State University on Thursday, September 19, 2013 at the University Hall Conference Center.
At 4pm, Urrea will read from his novels, The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America, and at 7pm, he will speak about his experiences researching and writing The Devil’s Highway with a book signing session to follow. Both events are free and open to the public.

The national bestseller, The Devil’s Highway, also a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and winner of the Lannan Literary Award, is the selection for Montclair Book 2013, a common reading experience for first-year students. Now considered an American classic, the book is the harrowing true account of a group of Mexican immigrants who attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, one of the harshest and deadliest regions on the continent. Of the 26 men who set out on the crossing, only 12 survived.

A member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Urrea is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his Mexican and American dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. The author of more than a dozen works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, Urrea has held writing workshops and taught at colleges and universities around the nation and is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

The two free events on September 19 are jointly sponsored by the Center for Writing Excellence, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the First-Year Writing Program and Student Development and Campus Life.

Montclair State University: Montclair State University offers a comprehensive array of undergraduate and graduate programs to a highly diverse population of 19,000 students in an expansive university setting combined with an intensive focus on student learning and success. For more information, visit montclair.edu.