The River Readings at Augustana
presents Richard Katrovas
Thursday, February 4, 7:00 p.m.
Wallenberg Hall, Denkmann Building
(Q & A open session 3:30-4:30 p.m., room 518, Tredway Library)
A skilled practitioner of poetry, fiction, and memoir, Richard Katrovas will read from his work. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Katrovas is the founding academic director of the Prague Summer Program, and is the author of six books of poetry, Green Dragons, Snug Harbor, The Public Mirror, The Book of Complaints, Dithyrambs and Prague Winter; a book of short stories, Prague USA; two memoirs, The Years of Smashing Bricks and The Republic of Burma Shave; and a novel, Mystic Pig. He is a professor of English at Western Michigan University.
Katrovas, spent his early years in cars and motels living on the highways of America while his father, a petty thief and conman, eluded state and federal authorities. During his father’s prison terms, Katrovas and his mother and siblings lived on welfare in public housing projects. Katrovas was adopted by relatives in his early teens, and lived with them for three years in Sasebo, Japan, where he earned a second-degree black belt in Shobukan Okinawa-te Karate. He graduated from high school in Coronado, California, and attended San Diego State University (B.A., English, 1977). He was then a Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, attended the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, and finished his graduate work in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA, 1983). Between 1970 and 1983, Katrovas taught karate and worked in numerous restaurants in San Diego, then New Orleans. He taught for twenty years at the University of New Orleans.
Selections from Katrovas’ work are available on Moodle, under Library/River Readings. Contact Margi Rogal or Kelly Daniels for further information.
