Pulitzer Prize Author Robert Olen Butler to Read at McNeese 

McNeese State University will host Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winner and former McNeese faculty member, for a book reading on Friday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. in the Noland Conference Room located in the Henning SEED Center. He will read from his new book: Twice Around a Marriage. This event is sponsored by the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in creative writing and is free to the public.   

 Founded in 1981, McNeese’s MFA degree program is the oldest MFA program in Louisiana and one of the oldest in the Southeast. 

 Butler has published 16 novels, including  A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He was teaching at McNeese at the time and continued to do so until 2000. He is now a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University.  

Butler is a recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award,  has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the arts grant. 

Butler’s stories have appeared in a multitude of publications and have been chosen for inclusion in multiple annual editions of texts and numerous college literature textbooks. He has lectured in universities, made conference appearances and met with writers’ groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U.S. State Department.  

Persons requesting accommodations in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should contact the Office of Campus Compliance and Civility at least 72 hours before the event. Additional information is available from the Office of Campus Compliance and Civility, located in the Burton Business Center, Suite 407, by phone at 337-475-5428, by fax at 337-475-5603 or by email at compliance@mcneese.edu.