National Public Radio commentator and writer Andrei Codrescu will give a free, public lecture titled "Lose a Country, Gain a World: Reflections on Exile" at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Friday, Feb. 16.
The lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in the Center for British and Irish Studies room on the fifth floor of Norlin Library and is sponsored by CU-Boulder's Center for Humanities and the Arts.
Codrescu, the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, is a poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, editor of the online literary journal Exquisite Corpse and is regularly featured on NPR's "All Things Considered."
The Romanian-born Codrescu "looks for the unusual in everyday life, often bringing an outsider's perspective to his writings and musings," according to his NPR biography. After the fall of the Ceausescu government in Romania, Codrescu returned to his homeland for the first time in more than 20 years and issued a series of six commentaries about his experience for NPR. He also wrote and starred in "Road Scholar," a Peabody Award-winning travel documentary about the United States, based on his book of the same name.
He is the author of four novels including "The Blood Countess" and "Wakefield," a novel about an inspirational speaker who makes a deal with the devil at the end of the 20th century. His latest book is "New Orleans, Mon Amour," a collection of 20 years of essays about the city.
Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1946 and came to the United States in 1966. He is a naturalized American citizen and currently resides in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La. His written works have been widely translated.
The Center for Humanities and the Arts is an interdisciplinary program focusing on the study of humanities and artistic creation with the goal of raising the profile of arts and humanities on the CU-Boulder campus. Each year the center selects a theme around which it organizes a yearlong list of activities, including a faculty and graduate student seminar, lecture series and a spring colloquium. The theme for the 2006-07 academic year is "Reaping Profits, Reckoning Loss."
For more information call (303) 492-1423 or visit the Center for Humanities and the Arts' Web site at .