MSU audience to hear author read from her honored works

Contact: Sammy McDavid

STARKVILLE, Miss.--An award-winning Tennessee fiction writer will share selections from her published works during a public program Thursday [Feb. 7] at Mississippi State.

Cary Holladay is the latest guest in the university English department's Robert Holland Visiting Writers Series. Open to all, her presentation will get under way at 8 p.m. in 100 McCool Hall, also known as the Rogers Auditorium.

Holladay, an associate professor of English at the University of Memphis, is the author of three collections of short stories, "The People Down South" (1989), "The Palace of Wasted Footsteps" (1998) and "The Quick-Change Artist" (2006). Her novel, "Mercury," was published in 2002.

Over a lengthy writing career, Holladay has been honored with the Goodheart and Paul Bowles prizes, as well as the 1999 O. Henry Award and a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and Pennsylvania State University.

For additional information, contact the English department at 662-325-3644.

For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.