EUGENE–Former University of Oregon professor Chang-rae Lee, acclaimed author of "Native Speaker" and "A Gesture Life," will read on the UO campus on Thursday, April 27, as part of the Program in Creative Writing Reading Series.

The free reading will begin at 8 p.m. in Agate Hall, 1787 Agate St. A book signing, sponsored by Black Sun Books, will follow.

Currently the director of Creative Writing at Hunter College in New York, Lee won both the American Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award for his first book, "Native Speaker" when he was a creative writing professor at the UO. He has just been awarded the Amistad Wolfe Literary Prize for Race Relations for "A Gesture Life."

Upon his first book’s publication, a critic from the "Literary Review" wrote that, "After so much racist posing, so much false restraint, ‘Native Speaker’ seems like a new kind of novel, the plainsong of unassimilated man, and in the murmur of his nascent voice is the soft clash of borders."

"A Gesture Life," published in 1999, also enjoyed immediate critical acclaim as soon as it was released. Celebrated on the cover of the "New York Times Book Review," the book made several national best-seller lists and is currently a contender for several other major literary prizes.

Reviewer Andrew O’Hagan called it "a beautiful, solitary, remarkably tender book that reveals the shadows that fall constantly from the past, the ones that move darkly on the lawns of the here and now."

"New York Times" reviewer Michiko Kakutani also praised the book, writing that Lee "has written a wise and humane novel … a wonderfully resonant portrait of a man caught between two cultures and two lives."

Lee’s reading comes near the end of this year’s Creative Writing reading series. The final session on Thursday, May 18 features Oregon writer Barry Lopez and includes the announcement of the annual Kidd Prizes for undergraduate fiction and poetry.

For more information, call the UO Creative Writing Program, (541) 346-0544.

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