Pulitzer-winning novelist to give reading at DePauw Wednesday

Jennifer Egan, who will appear at DePauw University Wednesday night to read from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "A Visit from the Goon Squad," has been named by Time magazine as one of its 100 most influential people in the world.

Egan's reading at DePauw comes just nine days after she won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is also the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Her Greencastle appearance, sponsored by the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Meharry Hall of historic East College and is free and open to the public.

In the May 2 issue of Time, now on newsstands, the list also includes U.S. Representatives Michele Bachmann and Gabrielle Giffords, Facebook founder Mark Zucker- berg, first lady Michelle Obama and the soon-to-be-married Prince William and Kate Middleton.

"They are artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry," the magazine notes. "Their ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution."

"There is, apparently, no story that Jennifer Egan can't tell," Curtis Sittenfeld writes in Time. "Her five books of fiction range from an achingly gorgeous coming-of-age novel ('The Invisible Circus') to a gothic tale of betrayal ('The Keep') to a multi-decade kaleidoscopic depiction of the music business ('A Visit from the Goon Squad,' this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction).

"No matter what the topic is, I know if Egan wrote the article, I'll want to read it."

Calling it "an inventive book," the Wall Street Journal noted, "Set in the music industry, 'Goon Squad' follows a middle-aged record executive named Bennie Salazar, his kleptomaniac assistant, Sasha, and a dozen or more overlapping characters whose lives are altered by the forces of time and technology. One chapter is written as a celebrity profile; another is rendered as a Powerpoint presentation. The narrative, skipping forward and back, weaving a loose-link chain from strands of backstory, has been likened to the experience of surfing the web," wrote Steven Kurutz.

Egan also authored "Look at Me," a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and other magazines and her non-fiction articles appear frequently in the New York Times Magazine.

The James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series was established at DePauw in 1998 with gifts from Marilou Morrell Kelly, a 1955 graduate of the university.