VIDEO: Kansas City author brings Book Talk to campus

By Megan Murphy

Reporter

whitterrell

Whitney Terrell, recently awarded the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal, is coming to Crowder College. On November 29th, he will be having a book talk at 6:30 p.m. in the Longwell Museum. Additionally, there will be an event for students at 12:30 p.m. Both events are free to the public.

“I read a review in the New Yorker of (The Good Lieutenant),” said Andy Wood, president of Crowder’s Board of Trustees. “I sent (Mr. Terrell) an email inviting him down to Crowder.  (He said) he would love to come.”

Published this summer by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, The Good Lieutenant opens with Army Lieutenant Emma Fowler on a mission gone wrong. Many of her men, including her lover, Dixon Pulowski are injured or killed.

Terrell employs an interesting narrative choice in The Good Lieutenant– as the story progresses backwards from the initial incident, the situations that led to the beginning of the novel are revealed.

Terrell’s previous work has also received numerous acclaims. His first novel The Huntsman was selected as a Best Book of 2001 by both the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has also been published in New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Observer.

“I believe The Huntsman (won) several awards,” Wood continued. “Since getting in touch with Mr. Terrell, I (have read) some of the articles he wrote for The Washington Post as an embedded reporter. He had an editorial in The New York Times this summer.”

The Good Lieutenant was also recently named a 2016 notable fiction book by The Washington Post.

In both 2006 and 2010, Terrell was an embedded reporter in Iraq, which is where he was inspired to write The Good Lieutenant. Originally in Iraq with the Engineering News-Record, he also reported for The Washington Post, Slate, and NPR. He previously was a writing instructor and Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.

Mr. Terrell currently teaches creative writing at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

“I would hope anytime we get the opportunity to speak to an author who has been published several times, students may find some benefit,” said Wood. “Further, Mr. Terrell grew up in Kansas City, and I think it may benefit students to see and hear someone from Missouri who has done well as an author.”

For more information, see Mr. Terrell’s website at whitneyterrell.com.

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