Essayist Sven Birkerts to speak at ECC at free evemt

Submitted by ECC

Sven Birkerts, a Boston-based author and editor of the literary magazine AGNI, will be the next guest of Elgin Community College’s 2012-2013 Writers Center Reading Series on Thursday, Feb. 21. The free event starts at 7:30 p.m. in the ECC Arts Center, Building H, Room H142, 1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin.

Birkerts has been editor of AGNI since July 2002. He is the author of eight books, including “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age,” “Then, Again: The Art of Time in the Memoir,” and his newest book, “The Other Walk.” He has edited “Tolstoy’s Dictaphone: Writers and the Muse,” as well as “Writing Well” (with Donald Hall) and “The Evolving Canon.”

Birkerts has received grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. He was winner of the Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle in 1985 and the Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award from PEN for the best book of essays in 1990.

Birkerts has reviewed regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Mirabella, Parnassus, The Yale Review, and other publications. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and Mount Holyoke College, and is the current director of the graduate Bennington Writing Seminars.

A pre-reading dinner with Birkerts will be held at 5:30 p.m. For reservations, contact Rachael Tecza at rtecza@elgin.edu or (847) 214-7578. Copies of Birkerts’ work also will be available for sale and signing at the event.