David Mitchell, author of “Cloud Atlas,” a Man Booker Prize finalist and now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, presents a reading, lecture and workshop this week on Central Campus.
Mitchell, Zell Distinguished Writer in Residence, presents a fiction reading at 6 p.m. today in the U-M Museum of Art Apse. A public reception and book signing precede the reading from 5-6 p.m. in the UMMA Forum. He then presents a fiction workshop at 3 p.m. Wednesday in 3241 Angell Hall; a Q-and-A session at 2 p.m. Thursday in the Hopwood Room, Angell Hall; followed by a lecture at 5:10 p.m. in the UMMA Helmut Stern Auditorium.
Dave Eggers of the New York Times has called “Cloud Atlas” a modern classic that should be read by any student of contemporary literature. Megan Levad, assistant director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing, says, “David Mitchell stands out among contemporary novelists as one of the best at melding the fine craftsmanship of a serious artist with the playful imagination and narrative intelligence of a blockbuster genre-fiction writer.”
Mitchell’s other books include “Black Swan Green,” selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by Time; “Number9Dream,” short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; “Ghostwritten,” awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best book by a writer under 35 and short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award; and recently, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.” He lives in Ireland.
