Office of External Communications

Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax: 713.743.8199

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2004

Contact: Angie Joe
713.743.8153 (office)
713.617.7138 (pager)
ajoe@uh.edu

Journalist Richard Rodriguez and physician Abraham Verghese will continue the Margarett Root Brown Houston Reading Series, co-sponsored by Inprint and the University of Houston, Monday, Nov. 8.

Doors open to the public at 6:45 p.m., and the reading begins at 7:30 p.m. General admission is $5, and the event is free for students and senior citizens. Tickets are available only at the door the night of the reading. Seating is limited; no late seating is available.

The Village Voice characterizes Mexican-American writer and Pacific News Service editor Richard Rodriguez as “the best American essayist” and an author who “writes a lonely line of individualism, the grandeur and grief of the American soul.” His trilogy on American public life includes “Hunger of Memory,” “Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father” and most recently “Brown: The Last Discovery of America.” The Los Angeles Times writes, “Richard Rodriguez’s beautiful new book, ‘Brown,’ is a meditation on America’s family secrets.” Rodriguez received a Peabody Award for “NewsHour Essays on American Life.”

Of Abraham Verghese’s “The Tennis Partner,” a New York Times Notable Book, Natalie Goldberg writes, “Beautifully written, it broke my heart and made me happy all at the same time.” His highly acclaimed first book, “My Own Country”is an account of Verghese’s practice with rural Tennessee AIDS patients in the 1980s. Time calls the work “a fine mix of compassion and precision.” The Ethiopian-born, South Asian physician has earned praise in publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to the New England Journal of Medicine. Verghese is currently director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Humanities at UT-Health Science Center in San Antonio. His first novel will be published in 2005.

The Margarett Root Brown Houston Reading Series, now in its 24th season and presented in association with the UH Creative Writing Program and the Alley Theatre, brings the world’s leading writers to Houston. Remaining writers for the 2004-5 series are Jeffrey Eugenides, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Elena Poniatowska and Jonathan Franzen.

For information, call 713-521-2026 or visit http://www.inprint-inc.org.

For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.