About Lauren Groff:
Lauren Groff is the award-winning and bestselling author of the celebrated short story collections, Delicate Edible Birds, Florida, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Brawler, as well as several novels: The Monsters of Templeton, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, Arcadia, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, Fates and Furies, a finalist for the National Book Award and Amazon's pick for Best Book of the Year, and the instant New York Times bestsellers Matrix and The Vaster Wilds. Groff is a captivating and thoughtful speaker who loves connecting with audiences over discussion of her bestselling works. She is also a co-owner of the independent bookstore The Lynx.
Groff’s work has appeared in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Atlantic, and in several of the annual The Best American Short Stories anthologies. Groff’s fiction has won the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, the Medici Book Club Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. She lives in Gainsville, Florida with her husband and two sons.
About Marion Turner
Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. She is the author of numerous books, including Chaucer: A European Life (Princeton, 2019) and The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton, 2023) both of which won many prizes and accolades. Her books have been picked as books of the year by many publications including The New Yorker, The Times, the TLS, and BBC History. Her next book—Reading Fiction: A History—will come out in 2027. Turner regularly appears on radio and TV, and often gives public lectures, speaks at literary festivals, and works with schools, libraries, museums, and literary societies. Marion is passionate about opening up access to older literature and breaking down perceived barriers to reading and engaging with these wonderful texts
About the Francis A. McAnaney Humanities Lecture
Lauren Groff and Marion Turner join us as part of the Francis A. McAnaney Humanities Lecture, previously known as the Christian Culture Lecture. This lecture series has welcomed remarkable writers, historians, philosophers, and theologians to campus for more than 15 years. The Francis A. McAnaney Humanities Lecture has been endowed by a gift from the Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin Foundation. This continues a lecture series revived by Donald and Susan Rice ’61 in 2006 in memory of Bruno P. Schlesinger.
