The University of New Mexico's English Graduate Student Association and Department of English Language and Literature will host a marathon reading of Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead (1991) beginning Sept. 22 at 4 p.m. in the Fiesta Room of UNM's Student Union Building. Silko, a UNM alumna and former UNM instructor, will open the event.
In the tradition of Purdue and UCLA, a marathon reading is a nonstop public event in which a single literary work is read aloud to an audience from beginning to end. Silko, along with faculty, student and guest readers, will begin reading Almanac of the Dead on Thursday evening, and will continue until all 763 pages have been read.
The event will open in the Student Union Building from 4-9 p.m. After 9 p.m., the reading will continue overnight at a nearby graduate student's home until 8 a.m., when faculty and students will conclude the reading at the EGSA lounge in the Humanities building.
Silko is one of America's most well known Native writers. She was born in Albuquerque in 1948 and grew up on the Laguna Pueblo. She graduated magna cum laude from UNM in 1969 with her bachelor's degree in English. Silko has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Chicago Review and Pushcart prizes for her poetry, a MacArthur Foundation genius award, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from UNM, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and she has been named a Living Cultural Treasure by the New Mexico Endowment of the Humanities. Silko has taught at UNM, the Navajo Community College and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Almanac of the Dead is a vast novel, spanning five hundred years and presenting some seventy characters. The novel depicts indigenous peoples' resistance to Anglo-European oppression in order to retake their ancestral lands and begin the healing of the world. While some critics have objected to a perceived exaggeration of corruption in Anglo-American society, others have praised the work as a vision of global Native regeneration.
Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-5813