MCW Alum Brian Hart Reads at BookPeople

Brian Hart is no stranger to accolades – in 2006, he become the first-ever recipient of the University of Texas’ Keene Prize for Literature, the largest student literary prize in existence. Now his debut novel is netting him some awfully nice notices. As in, “quietly exceptional,” quoth The New Yorker.

Then Came the Evening (Bloomsbury USA, $25) has been building exceptionally good buzz since its release in late December. Publishers Weekly calls it “sublime” while Kirkus praises its “heartbreaking, convincing drama... a haunting Western tale."

Hart, a native Idahoan and former "carpenter, welder, drywall hanger, dishwasher, commercial fisherman, line cook, and janitor," graduated from UT’s Michener Center for Writers in 2008. He’ll read from the new novel tomorrow night (Thursday, Jan. 21) at BookPeople at 7pm.

And speaking of MCW, UT recently announced author Elizabeth McCracken (An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination) has assumed the Michener Endowed Chair in Creative Writing, in a joint hire split by the Michener Center and the Department of English.

In other news, the Michener Center will present an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford (Independence Day, The Sportswriter) on Feb. 4. (See details here.) Ford is this spring’s Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Michener, in a position previously held by Jim Crace, whose new Austin-based novel All That Follows will be published by Nan A. Talese this April. And while we’re sort of on the subject, Jim Crace called Brian Hart’s novel “a triumph.”

See how that came full circle?