Wright Library to host author Ben Fountain
About this Event
As a kick-off to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize weekend, Wright Memorial Public Library is pleased to welcome Ben Fountain for a public conversation with the author on Friday, November 8, 2024, 5:00 PM, at Wright Library, 1776 Far Hills Avenue in Oakwood, Ohio. The program will be moderated by Miami Valley writer and educator Gary Mitchner.
Guests are encouraged to bring a book for signing after the program. In-person attendees may also enter into a drawing to win copies of Fountain's books or tickets to the 2024 DLPP Conversation with the Authors event November 9, 2024, at the Victoria Theatre in Dayton. Must be present to win. More event details.
Wright Library’s Community Room seating capacity is 80, so please arrive early to ensure your seat and enter the prize drawing.
Can't make it in person? Register to watch the program by Zoom.
The November 8th author talk at Wright Library is made possible with support from the Wright Memorial Library Foundation and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.
Read more from DLPP Authors
Visit the DLPP Authors section at Wright Library or browse the Wright Library DLPP Collection - titles from past finalists, winners, and runners-up.
About the Author
After practicing law in real estate finance and banking, Ben Fountain authored the New York Times bestselling novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012). The book earned him numerous awards including the 2013 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Fiction runner-up, and was later adapted into a feature film. The story chronicles a young Iraq War hero whose squad appears in a Dallas Cowboys halftime show as part of an effort to rekindle support for the war.
His 2018 nonfiction book, Beautiful Country Burn Again, is a narrative, with history, of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Beautiful Country is based on a series of pieces—hybrid concoctions of essay and reportage—published by The Guardian during 2016, which were subsequently nominated by The Guardian’s editors for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.
Fountain’s most recent book, Devil Makes Three (2023) earned designation as a New York Times Editors' Choice. The novel is about greed, power, and American complicity set in Haiti.
Fountain’s short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Paris Review, Sewanee Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Esquire, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere, as well as in the collections Dallas Noir and Haiti Noir II.
Ben Fountain is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University School of Law. He has taught at the University of Texas, both in the English Department and at the Michener Center for Writers, and served a two-year appointment as University Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. Fountain has lived in Dallas since 1983.