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Award-winning Minnesota author Ray Gonzalez to read from new book April 23 at St. Olaf College

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April 17, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? Award-winning Minnesota author Ray Gonzalez will read from his new book Turtle Pictures on Monday, April 23, at St. Olaf College.

The reading, free and open to the public, will be at 7:30 p.m. in Room 525 of Rolvaag Memorial Library. Gonzalez will sign copies of Turtle Pictures after the reading.

Turtle Pictures, published last year, is a collection of poetry and essays about the struggle of modern Hispanics. The image of the turtle represents "the ancient blood that rushes through the veins of today?s Chicanos," according to the book?s publisher, University of Arizona Press.

Turtle Pictures earned a Loft Literary Center Career Initiative award and was selected as a finalist for this year?s Minnesota Book Awards. Applauded by critics, Turtle Pictures has been called "an amazing and beautifully written book" by the Santa Fe (N.M.) New Mexican and "a suggestive and inspiring blend of mythic Native American roots and political Chicano branches" by Publisher?s Weekly.

Gonzalez has emerged as a leader in the new generation of Hispanic writers. Robert Bly, author of Iron John, writes, "Ray Gonzalez has something serious in him that pulls at the best in us, the reader. He can write like the owl and the panther."

Renowned as a poet, author and anthologist, Gonzalez has chronicled his turbulent upbringing on the Texas border in other works, including Memory Fever and The Heat of the Arrivals, winner of the 1997 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award. He holds the McKnight Land Grant Professorship at the University of Minnesota. He has written a memoir and five books of poetry, including Cabato Sentora, and has edited 12 anthologies, including four of Chicano poetry and fiction. He lives in Farmington, Minn.

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St. Olaf College prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering development of mind, body and spirit. A four-year, coeducational liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), St. Olaf has a student enrollment of 2,950 and a full-time faculty complement of approximately 300. It is one of Money Guide?s top 100 "elite values in college education today," and it leads the nation?s colleges in percentage of students who study abroad.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.