The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series of Hope College will feature Amy Bloom on Thursday, April 17, at 7 p.m. in the Knickerbocker Theatre in downtown Holland.

There will also be a question-and-answer session in the Fried-Hemenway
Auditorium in the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication on
Thursday, April 17, at 3:30 p.m.

The public is invited to both events. Admission is free.

Amy Bloom is the author of two novels and three collections of short
stories. Her "New York Times" bestselling novel "Away" (Random House,
2007) was called a "literary triumph" by the "Times," while "The
Washington Post" declared it, "desperate and impassioned, erotic and
moving--absolutely hypnotic." Her first novel, "Love Invents Us," was
called "an unsettling tale of desire." Bloom's short fiction includes
"Where the God Of Love Hangs Out" (Random House, 2010), also a New
York Times bestseller; "Come to Me," a National Book Award finalist;
and "A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You," a National Book Critics
Circle Award finalist. Her first nonfiction book was "Normal:
Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with
Attitudes," now a staple of university sociology and biology courses.
Her work has been translated into 15 languages. Her most recent novel,
"Lucky Us," (Random House) will be released later this year.

A practicing psychotherapist for 20 years (after being a waitress, a
bartender, an actor and a peanut-picker), Bloom has an acute
understanding of human nature and an ear especially attuned to the
inner and outer voices of her characters. "I spent my professional
life exploring the gap between what people said and how they said it,
the chasm between what they felt and what they said they felt," she
has said.

Bloom is a National Magazine Award winner. She has demonstrated her
versatility and wit in the essays she has written for magazines such
as "The New Yorker," "The New York Times Magazine," "Vogue," "The
Atlantic Monthly," "Slate" and "Salon," on subjects as diverse as
cooking lasagna, marrying at 50, and a history of portrait-painting.
She is the University Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan University.

Additional information is available online at jrvws.org.

The Knickerbocker Theatre is located at 86 E. Eighth St.  The Martha
Miller Center for Global Communication is located at 257 Columbia Ave,
at the corner of Columbia Avenue and 10th Street.