Novelist Carrie Brown, SBC visiting associate professor of English and creative writing, will read from her latest work, "Confinement," on Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. in the Cochran Library Browsing Room. The reading is free and open to the public.
For Brown, 2004 has been a particularly creative and rewarding year. Early in the year, she received the 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in the spring, "Confinement" was published by Algonquin Books to glowing reviews.
The prolific novelist was one of 42 writers the NEA chose out of 1,422 applicants for the $20,000 award. According to NEA guidelines, the grants represent the organization's "most direct investment in American creativity, encouraging the production of new work and allowing writers the time and means to write."
Brown, who applied for the award so far in advance that she forgot about it, was thrilled about the prestigious recognition. "I was very pleased, of course," she said. "There's nothing like having your work affirmed, particularly at a level of such stature. It's a significant award for a writer. NEA recognition is substantive, important support."
The author of four novels and a collection of short stories, "The House on Belle Isle," she is no stranger to literary accolades. Her first novel, "Rose's Garden," won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 1998. In 2001, "The Hatbox Baby" earned her the Great Lakes Book Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best work of fiction by a woman, and the Library of Virginia Award. The "Belle Isle" collection was a finalist for the Library of Virginia Book Award in 2002.
"Wings," a story published by The Georgia Review in 2002, was one of the works cited by the American Society of Magazine Editors in naming the Review a 2002 National Magazine Award finalist in the fiction category. And "Lamb in Love," Brown's second novel, has recently been optioned for film.
"Confinement" paints a detailed, moving portrait of Arthur Henning, a tortured-soul refugee from Nazi Austria who moves to America with his son, Toby, to start a new life as a chauffeur at the country estate of the Duvall family. Toby grows up with the Duvall's daughter, Aggie, who becomes pregnant and is ordered by her father to a home for unwed mothers.
Arthur's sympathy toward Aggie grows into attraction and he finds himself deeply conflicted by his feelings and Toby's desire for him to start an independent life. As he struggles to find a present and future he can live with, Arthur is tormented by the past and the fates that befell his family and peers.
People magazine called "Confinement" a "beautiful novel," and Sandra Scofield of the Chicago Tribune commented, "In Carrie Brown's capable hands, flashbacks are the stuff of poetry, history and love."
To research the work, Brown traveled to Vienna to soak up the region's rich culture and troubled history. A highlight of her quest was meeting with a museum curator, who showed her a photo album of pre-war Vienna in the early 1900s.
"It was really useful in terms of helping me imagine daily lives of people in Vienna at that time," she said, noting that the pictures tended to clarify and complement her own perceptions from "smelling the air and eating the food" in the modern-day city.
A frequent book reviewer for The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, as well as an occasional essayist and lecturer, Brown started working over the summer on a novel based on the lives of 19th century brother-and-sister astronomers William and Caroline Herschel.
Brown is married to novelist John Gregory Brown, the Julia Jackson Nichols professor of English at Sweet Briar, where he directs the creative writing program and coordinates the International Writers Series. The Browns have three children.
