KU News Release

Hall Center announces appearance by award-winning author

LAWRENCE — Jeannette Walls, award-winning author of “The Glass Castle,” will be the third speaker in the 2008-09 Humanities Lecture Series, sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas.

Walls will present her lecture, “The Glass Castle: Hunting Demons and Other Life Lessons,” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. “A Conversation with Jeannette Walls” will take place from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 19, at the Hall Center’s Conference Hall. Both events are free and open to the public.

“The Glass Castle” details Walls’ life growing up in extreme poverty and describes the harsh obstacles she faced in overcoming her past. From the desert Southwest to West Virginia, her account of an impoverished life is a powerful and moving first-person testament to what it means to be poor.

Walls’ memoir has been a New York Times bestseller for more than two years, has sold more than 2 million copies, has been translated into 16 languages and is being made into a movie by Paramount. Its numerous accolades include the Christopher Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Books for Better Living Award.

Founded in 1947, the Humanities Lecture Series is the oldest continuing series at KU. More than 150 eminent scholars from around the world have participated in the program, including authors Vladimir Nabokov and Aldous Huxley. Recent scholars have included Edward Said, Dava Sobel, Sherman Alexie and E.O. Wilson. Shortly after the program’s inception, a lecture by one outstanding KU faculty member each year was added to the schedule.

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