Joyce Carol Oates, Salman Rushdie to be ‘Caught in the Creative Act’

Writers Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie will give public readings and discuss their writing at the University of South Carolina as part of the popular student-community course, “Caught in the Creative Act.”

The course is free and open to the public.

Oates will read from and discuss her book, “The Falls,” Wednesday, March 19, at 5:45 p.m. in Belk Auditorium in the Moore School of Business, located at the corner of Barnwell and College streets.

In preparation for Oates’ talk, Janette Turner Hospital, Carolina Distinguished Professor, will lead a discussion about the book Monday, March 17, from 5:45 – 7 p.m. in Gambrell Hall auditorium.

Rushie will read from and discuss his book, “Midnight’s Children,” at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, in Belk Auditorium.

Two public events are planned Monday, April 7, in preparation for Rushdie’s talk. The “Caught in the Creative Act” lecture on “Midnight’s Children” will be held from 5:45 – 7 p.m. and will be led by Hospital. After a reception, a symposium, titled “Ethics, Religion and International Relations: Reflections on Salman Rushdie,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. The discussion will feature University of South Carolina faculty in the fields of religious studies, English, anthropology and law and will be moderated by Brad Warthen, editorial page editor of The State newspaper.

Both April 7 events are free and will be held in Gambrell auditorium.

Symposium panelists will include Dr. Cliff Hospital, who will discuss the Indian religious and folklore elements in “Midnight’s Children” and the history of Hindu/Muslim friction in India; Dr. Waleed El-Ansary, who will explain fatwas (Islamic religious rulings) and why Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” led to international discord; Dr. Maimuna Huq, who will discuss Islamic culture and political movements in South Asia; and Dr. Meili Steele, who will discuss political discourse, book burnings and writing as a political act.

The symposium is sponsored by the Walker Institute for International and Area Studies.

Oates is Roger S. Berlind Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. Raised in upstate New York, Oates graduated from Syracuse University and earned her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. She taught for many years in Detroit, where she set many of her novels, including “Them,” which won the National Book Award in 1970. She has earned many national awards, including ones for her 2005 novel, “The Falls,” and her novel, “We Were the Mulvaneys,” was an Oprah Book Club pick in 2001.

“Midnight’s Children,” Rushdie’s second novel, earned him the Booker Prize for Fiction and international fame in 1981. The India native was forced into exile in 1989 when Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran deemed his book, “The Satanic Verses,” heretical and issued a fatwa against Rushdie. Rushdie emerged from hiding in 1998 and is a distinguished writer-in-residence at Emory University.

“Caught in the Creative Act,” in its seventh year, is an undergraduate honors college course that is open to the larger community. The format calls for students and community participants to read a variety of novels, short story and poetry collections, memoirs and literary non-fiction and then meet the authors who give a reading, discuss the creative process and answer probing questions.

Many award-winning authors have been featured, including Nobel laureate Derek Walcott; Pulitzer and/or National Book Award winners Robert Pinksy, Richard Rhodes, Robert Olen Butler and Geraldine Brooks; Commonwealth Prize winner Shauna Singh Baldwin; and many other distinguished writers, from Stanley Crouch and E.L. Doctorow to Susan Vreeland.

Hospital, creator of “Caught in the Creative Act,” is an awarding-winning writer. Her latest novel, “Orpheus Lost,” has been named to Booklist’s Top 30 novels of the year and the American Library Association’s Best 25 Books of the Year. Her previous novel, “Due Preparations for the Plague,” earned Hospital the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2003 and the Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel by an Australian Woman in 2003 by Sisters of Crime, one of Australia’s largest literary societies.

Hospital grew up in Queensland, Australia, and taught at universities in Australia, Canada, England, France and the United States before joining the English department as a Distinguished Writer in Residence, a post previously held by the late James Dickey.

For more information about “Caught in the Creative Act,” visit the Web site: http://www.cas.sc.edu/cica/.