Novelist, Essayist
Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” In 2013 she was awarded South Korea’s Pak Kyong-ni Prize for her contribution to international literature. She is the author of Lila, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country, which was nominated for a National Book Award. She lives in Iowa City where she taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop for twenty-five years.
Associate Professor of English, St. Jerome's University
Chad Wriglesworth is an expert in the relationships between American literature, environment, and religion. In addition to master’s degrees from both Regent College and Portland State University, he recently finished a Ph.D. in twentieth-century American literature with an emphasis in religious thought and environmental humanities. Wriglesworth is a prominent interpreter of Robinson’s work, having published the book chapter, “Becoming a Creature of Artful Existence: Theological Perception and Ecological Design in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.” Other key publications include work on Wendell Berry, Raymond Carver, and Theodore Winthrop. Wriglesworth has been selected for an excellence in teaching award both at the University of Iowa and St. Jerome’s. Wriglesworth’s current project is a book titled Geographies of Reclamation: Writing and Water in the Columbia River Basin. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and spending time with his family.