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Mona Simpson is coming to Hofstra University on Wednesday, March 10 at 7PM to read in the library’s Cultural Center Theater. You are welcome to join us.
In 1988 my father introduced my sisters and me to Mona. We were all living in New York City then and so was Mona. She had recently published her first novel, Anywhere But Here, and my father had read it, loved it, and given it to his girls because he thought we might love it too. He met Mona at Princeton University where he teaches. That year she was the fortunate recipient of a Hodder Fellowship. I’ll never forget how I devoured her book, realizing as I read it that I had to be a writer too, that I wanted to study it, each sentence to see how it was made. And I will never forget the dinner at my sister Laura’s old apartment on 108th Street, meeting this spectacular woman whose work I so admired. We became fast friends, shopping together, running together, being single in New York together. I looked up to her, asked her about writing, trying to glean from her the big lessons of this career. Generous and loving and kind, after a while my father referred to her at his fifth daughter. Young writers are so fortunate if they have a role model. She was mine. She and her work, without doubt, drove me to have the courage to write my own fiction.
Now all these novels and years later, I bring Mona Simpson to Hofstra University’s Great Writers Great Readings series because I want to share her with my students and the larger Hofstra community. I know she will inspire all. Please come.
Next in the series is the poet Rosanna Warren on April 14th. Same place. Same time.
MARTHA McPHEE 