Colloquium on Thornton Wilder Will Be Held March 27

Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award-winning actress Rosemary Harris will read from Wilder's works.

"Wait til I'm Dead," a colloquium on the fiction of Thornton Wilder, will be held Saturday, March 27 from 9:00AM to 5:00PM in 1400 Marie Mount Hall at the University of Maryland. Admission will be free.

Wilder (1897-1975) received three Pulitzer Prizes - for The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. His plays today are collectively produced at least twice every day of the year; but his novels, although all in print, have attracted far less attention. On the occasion of the landmark publication by the Library of America of Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926-1948, scholars in classics and American literature, journalists, biographers, and family members will participate in a one-day program of lectures, panels, interviews, and readings that will try to place Wilder's fiction in American literary history and culture.

Participants include Emeritus Professor of English Jackson Bryer, Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda, Professor of Classics Judith Hallett, Newsweek Senior Writer Jeremy McCarter, Library of America editor J.D. McClatchy, biographer Penelope Niven, Emeritus Professor of Classics Kurt Raaflaub (Brown University), Professor of English Martha Nell Smith, Professor of English Cecelia Tichi (Vanderbilt University), Professor of English Christopher Wheatley (Catholic University), and Tappan Wilder, Thornton's nephew and literary executor.

The day will conclude with a reading from Wilder's fiction by Rosemary Harris. A universally acclaimed actress, Harris won a Tony for her portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the original Broadway production of The Lion in Winter. 

The event is sponsored by the Departments of English and Classics and the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park; the Classical Association of the Atlantic States; and the Thornton Wilder Society.

For complete details, contact Judith P. Hallett at jeph@umd.eduThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view itor 301-405-2024.