Patrick O’Keeffe will read from his new novel at UT’s Writers in the Library on Monday, March 31, at 7 p.m. in the John C. Hodges Library Auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

The Visitors, O’Keeffe’s lyrical first novel, set in America and Ireland, moves back and forth in time and place to weave the story of two Irish families forever linked by love, secrets, and their heritage. Illuminating the precarious balance of family intimacies and how stories can carry over from one generation to the next, The Visitors further delivers on the elegant prose and plotting that earned O’Keeffe critical acclaim for The Hill Road, his collection of four, connected novellas set in a fictional Irish dairy farming village.

O’Keeffe himself was born on an Irish dairy farm in County Limerick. He has lived in the US for over twenty years — at first as an undocumented immigrant, before gaining his Green Card. He received a BA in English at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and an MFA in fiction writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

He has taught at the University of Michigan, Colgate University, and the University of Cincinnati. He is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Ohio University.

O’Keeffe’s work has appeared in the Irish Times, Doubletake, and the Michigan Quarterly Review.

The Hill Road was a Barnes and Noble Discovery selection and received the Story Prize for 2005. O’Keeffe has also received a Whiting Award for fiction writing.

Read a review of The Visitors at Chapter 16: a community of Tennessee writers, readers and passersby (brought to you by Humanities Tennessee).

Patrick O’Keeffe’s reading was made possible by funding from UT’s Ready For The World international and intercultural initiative.
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Writers in the Library is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Libraries and the UT Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For further information contact Marilyn Kallet, Director, UT Creative Writing Program (mkallet@utk.edu), or Christopher Hebert, Writer-in-Residence, UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

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