Fiction writer Joy Castro to give lecture

LAWRENCE — Joy Castro, professor of English and director of ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, will speak and give a reading Thursday, April 2, as part of the 2015 Department of English British and American Lecture. The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union, and it is open to the public.

Castro, a creative writer and scholar, is best known for her work as a memoirist and fiction writer. She is the author of “The Truth Book: A Memoir” (University of Nebraska), the New Orleans literary thrillers “Hell or High Water” and “Nearer Home” (St. Martin’s) and the essay collection “Island of Bones” (University of Nebraska). She has also edited a collection of essays about depictions of family in memoir titled “Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family” (University of Nebraska). Castro’s short fiction collection “How Winter Began” is forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in September 2015.

The Department of English American and British Lecture alternates annually between American and British literary subjects and is endowed by an anonymous benefactor.