Writers@Grinnell: Jess Row

Acclaimed writer Jess Row will give a reading as part of the Writers@Grinnell creative writing series.

The reading will be held at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5 in the Alumni Recitation Hall, Room 302. This event is free and open to the public.

A native of Washington, D.C., Row was named a 2007 Best of Young American Novelist by Granta and has received numerous awards for his work, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The New York Times praised his first novel, Your Face in Mine, as “provocative and intriguing.”

The book investigates race and culture through “racial reassignment surgery.” Row’s Martin has the surgery to transform himself from white to African-American. An old classmate helps him navigate the change.

Row’s short stories have been widely published, including in Harvard Review, American Short Fiction, and The Atlantic. His criticism appears frequently in Boston Review and the New York Times Book Review.

Future events in this year’s series will feature playwright Dan O’Brien, Iowa Writers Workshop professor T. Geronimo Johnson, and Alison Bechdel, who recently received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.”

Writers@Grinnell brings to campus writers of all kinds: poets, novelists, memoirists, essayists, radio essayists, columnists, graphic memoirists, playwrights, and short story writers.