Event Details:

Celebration of Literary Arts

Spring Semester Speaker: Bret Anthony Johnston

11:15 a.m. Thursday, February 26

Ankeny Campus, Building 2, Room 25B

Free and open to the public

DMACC will welcome internationally best-selling author Bret Anthony Johnston at Ankeny Campus on Thursday, February 26, marking the first event of the spring semester's Celebration of Literary Arts. 

Praised by The New York Times Book Review for his "virtuosic gift," Johnston is the author of the forthcoming Encounters with Unexpected Animals: Stories, the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, and the multi-award-winning collection Corpus Christi: Stories.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle, "Johnston's genius lies in weaving a web of optimism around a series of difficult topics." An Italian daily newspaper, il manifesto, hailed Remember Me Like This as "one of the most intense and engaging novels of the new millennium."

Johnston's writings have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Magazine, among many others. His work has been widely translated around the world. 

Among Johnston's many accolades include a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the Glasgow Prize, the Jesse H. Jones Award, and the Sunday Times Short Story Award, regarded as the world's most prestigious prize for a single short story. He also edited Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer and wrote the documentary film Waiting for Lightning, released globally by Samuel Goldwyn Films. 

After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for more than a decade, Johnston now serves as Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Mari Sabusawa Regents Chair in Writing. 

Fun fact: after selling his television to buy his first board more than 40 years ago, Bret has yet to outgrow his love for skateboarding. 

Free books (while supplies last) will be available during Johnston's visit to Ankeny Campus