Evann Garrison, Westminster College lecturer of English, will present "Hester, Hillary, and Personal Politics" at the Bleasby Colloquium Thursday, March 27, at 7 p.m. in the Sebastian Mueller Theater of the McKelvey Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.

"As a creative writer, I approach research with selfish motives," Garrison said. "My questions emerge from the characters I meet in my imagination and from their stories. My general question is how young women have been allowed to grow up and what they have become in 20th-century coming-of-age stories."

"In this project, I have been looking at John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, and one of his characters, Hester the Molester," Garrison continued. "I compare Hester to some of the particular comments pundits are making about Hillary Clinton. The third element is a piece of my own past, Sara Evans' Personal Politics, an oral history that details the fate of women who became involved in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, then were pulled into anti-war activism, and finally were driven to declare a feminist revolution in the 1970s."

This colloquium is part of the George Bleasby Colloquia, a series of literary events in honor of the late Dr. Bleasby, who chaired the Department of English at Westminster from 1954-75.

Garrison, who has been with Westminster since 2003, earned an undergraduate degree from Westminster, a master's from Duke University, and a master of fine arts from Goddard College.

Contact Garrison at (724) 946-7341 or e-mail garriseg@westminster.edu for additional information. 

Evann Garrison