Author Alex Marshall to speak at Friends of Library dinner

Author Alex Marshall will be the guest speaker at the Friends of the Old Dominion University Library's Eighth Annual Author Dinner, to be held on campus Thursday, April 4.

Jeffrey H. Richards, professor of English, will be honored with the Friends of the Library Outstanding Achievement Award.

Marshall, a former staff writer with The Virginian-Pilot and currently an independent journalist in New York, is the author of the just-published book "How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken."

His articles and columns have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, Metropolis Magazine, The Washington Post, Salon Magazine, George magazine, Architecture, Newsday, The Wilson Quarterly, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications. Marshall will speak on the topic "How Cities Work."

Richards has taught at Old Dominion since 1992. His books include "Early American Drama," "Mercy Otis Warren" and "Theater Enough: American Culture and the Metaphor of the World State, 1607-1789." His interests and expertise range from Puritan writers and colonial women playwrights to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Eugene O'Neill. At the core of all this is an abiding passion for exploring how American literature reflects the soul of the nation.

The dinner will begin with a reception and book signing at 5 p.m. in the Elizabeth River Room of Webb Center; dinner and the program will follow at 5:30.

The cost of the event is $20 per person. Reservations are due by Friday, March 29, and may be made by contacting Fern McDougal at Perry Library, 683-4141 or fmcdouga@odu.edu.