THOUSAND OAKS : 2 Pulitzer Winners to Visit University

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning writers will read from their works and discuss their experiences this week at California Lutheran University as part of the university’s annual Pulitzer Symposium.

Galway Kinnell won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the American Book Award in 1983 for his “Selected Poems.”

He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Brandeis University, the Poetry Society of America, and the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Shirley Ann Grau has published eight novels and short story collections. “The Keepers of the House” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1965.

Grau graduated from Tulane University with, as she stated in the announcement of the symposium, “a BA, Phi Beta Kappa and other assorted awards of no interest to grown-ups who have left their school days behind.”

The organizer of the event, Jack Ledbetter, said of Kinnell: “In my opinion, he’s the best contemporary poet there is.”

Ledbetter said he contacted Grau for the symposium because “I read one of her books and was so taken” with it.

Both authors will hold a panel discussion at 10 a.m. today in the university gymnasium.

Kinnell will speak tonight at 8 and Grau will return at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Preus-Brandt Forum on the Thousand Oaks campus.