CHESTERTOWN, MD—Author Peter Turchi returns to his alma mater, Washington College, Thursday, October 1, 2015, to read from his work and talk about the writing craft.  Part of the Sophie Kerr lecture series, the event will take place in the Rose O’Neil Literary House, 407 Washington Avenue, at 4:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

A Baltimore native who won the 1982 Sophie Kerr Prize, Turchi has written six books and co-edited three anthologies. His latest book, A Muse and A Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery and Magic, has been hailed as a “brilliant book on the writing craft.” 

Turchi earned an MFA from the University of Arizona and has taught writing at Northwestern University, Appalachian State University, and Arizona State University. He directed the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College for 15 years before joining the faculty at the University of Houston, where he now teaches both nonfiction and fiction. The Houston Chronicle has described Turchi as “one of the country’s foremost thinkers on the art of writing.” He has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation.

“It’s always a pleasure to return to Washington College, where I got not only my formal undergraduate education, but inspiration of all sorts,” Turchi said last May before delivering the keynote remarks at the 2015 Sophie Kerr Prize announcement on campus.   “The benefits of the Sophie Kerr Fund — including the prize, but probably even more important the publications and programs the Fund provided — loomed large for all of us who were interested in writing. It helped to create an atmosphere that I’ve tried to reproduce, in some fashion, in every writing program I’ve been a part of since I graduated.”