News News Release

14th Annual National Book Awards

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
ROXANE CASE, Cultural Events coordinator
218-299-4366
AMY KELLY, College Communications and Media Relations director
218-299-3642

CONCORDIA PRESENTS 14TH ANNUAL NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
RESCHEDULED FROM THIS PAST SPRING

Concordia College will present the 14th National Book Awards at Concordia, Oct.3-4. Sigrid Nunez, 2018 fiction winner, and Victoria Johnson, 2018 nonfiction finalist, will be on campus for the featured Readings and Conversation hosted by MPR’s Stephanie Curtis. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, in the Centrum, Knutson Campus Center, with a book signing to follow. The public is invited to this free event. This event, previously scheduled for this past spring, was postponed because of weather.

Nunez’s winning fiction, “The Friend,” is an exploration of grief, healing and finding solace in an abandoned great dane. A faculty member at The New School in New York City, Nunez is recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and the Rome Prize in Literature. She has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and Boston University and has served as visiting writer or writer-in-residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. 

Johnson’s nonfiction finalist, “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic,” is about the life of Hosack, friend of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and correspondent of Thomas Jefferson and other leading figures. Johnson is currently an associate professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in New York City. She earned her doctorate in sociology from Columbia, her undergraduate degree at Yale in philosophy and has studied music and sociology at the Humboldt-Universität. She also previously taught on organizations and philanthropy at the University of Michigan.

Curtis is the senior producer of audience development and engagement at MPR News. You can hear her discuss movies on The Cube Critics podcast every week. She was a founding producer at The Current where she co-created the award-winning public affairs series Policy and a Pint. She launched The Thread, MPR News’s multi-platform books initiative.

-30-

(kk)
19-059