Renowned author and Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson to give 2019 Zahm Lecture, Wednesday, September 11 | University of Portland

Renowned author and Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson to give 2019 Zahm Lecture, Wednesday, September 11

Garaventa Center

September 3, 2019

Renowned author and Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson will present the 2019 Zahm Lecture “Wisdom and Knowledge” on Wednesday, September 11, at 7:15 p.m. in the Chiles Center. Robinson will speak about wonder and the absolute necessity of the humanities, faith and reason as partners in understanding our world.

Robinson was the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by former President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." In 2016 she was awarded the Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award in American Fiction, as well as the Dayton Peace Prize’s Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2013, she was awarded South Korea’s Pak Kyong-ni Prize for her contribution to international literature. She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Robinson's nonfiction books include The Givenness of ThingsWhen I Was a Child I Read Books, and Mother Country, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Robinson, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa, taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for 25 years. 

The Zahm Lecture, which kicks-off the academic year, addresses important issues in American Catholic higher education, and honors Fr. John Zahm, C.S.C., an eminent Holy Cross priest and scientist of the late 19th and early 20th century, who was one of University of Portland’s founders. 

For ADA accommodations or further information, please contact the Garaventa Center at 503.943.7702 or garaventa@up.edu