Author, Poet Sherman Alexie March 5, 2013

Award-winning author, poet and screenwriter Sherman Alexie will give a performance from his work at the University of Richmond’s Jepson Alumni Center, March 5, 7 p.m. A question and answer session will follow.

One of The New Yorker magazine’s Top 20 Writers for the 21st Century, Alexie writes about growing up as a Native American on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington. Much of his work revolves around themes of despair, poverty and alcoholism among Native Americans.

Alexie has won the Booklist’s Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction, a PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. His most recent book, “Blasphemy,” a collection of stories, was published in 2012. He wrote the screenplay for “Smoke Signals,” the first movie to be written and directed by a Native American.

The performance is part of “Performing Texts,” a series of guest performances sponsored by the University of Richmond’s English department with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Emily Poore at 804-289-8287.