DRUE HEINZ PRIZE WINNER AND JUDGE TO SPEAK AT PITT'S PITTSBURGH CONTEMPORARY WRITERS SERIES

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 17 -- Adria Bernardi, winner of the 2000 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and Frank Conroy, prize judge, will be featured at the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series on Thursday, Oct. 26, at 8:15 p.m., in the University of Pittsburgh's Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, Schenley Drive, Oakland.

Bernardi won the nation's most prestigious award for a book of short stories, "In The Gathering Woods," to be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October, 2000.

Bernardi also is the author of a novel, "The Day Laid on the Altar," and an oral history, "Houses with Names: The Italian Immigrants of Highwood, Illinois," and is the translator of Gianni Celati's "Adventures in Africa," and of screenwriter Tonino Guerra's poetry, "Abandoned Places."

A recipient of an Editors' Prize from the Missouri Review, and the James Fellowship awarded by the Heekin Group Foundation, Bernardi's novel received the 1999 Bakeless Prize from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Author Frank Conroy is the director of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has written three books, "Stop-Time," Viking Press; "Midair," E.P. Dutton; and "Body and Soul," Houghton Mifflin.

Nominated for a National Book Award in 1967, "Stop-Time" is studied by writing scholars as an example of the autobiography. It was chosen for the first manuscript project on the Internet homepage of The Writer's Workshop.

Prior to joining the University of Iowa in 1987, Conroy was director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Conroy writes for both scholarly and popular presses. His essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Partisan Review, Harpers, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine. Numerous anthologies include his short fiction. He is working on his fourth book.

The Contemporary Writers Series is co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Wyndham Garden Hotel-University Place, The Book Center, Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, Department of Africana Studies, The Women's Studies Program, Center for Latin American Studies, East Asian Studies, University of Pittsburgh Press, Creative Nonfiction, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and the Honors College.

The series is free and open to the public. For more information, call

412-624-6506.

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