Mary Karr, Ph.D. Keynote Speaker

Award winning, bestselling memoirist & poet
Winner, Martha Albrand Award for nonfiction
Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature, Syracuse University

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Biography

Mary Karr Speaker Profile:

Mary Karr is an award-winning poet and New York Times best-selling memoirist, and the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed, best-selling memoirs “The Liars’ Club” (2005), “Cherry”, and “Lit” (2010). Her latest book, “The Art of Memoir” (2016), is a master class on the fastest-growing literary genre. It debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller List and was blanketed in stellar reviews, and her book for graduates based on her acclaimed 2015 Syracuse “Gift of Fear” commencement speech, “Now Go Out There (and Get Curious)” (2016), has become a perennial graduation gift book. Her next book of poems, “Tropic of Squalor” comes out summer of 2018. In 2015 Syracuse University awarded Karr an honorary doctorate in humane letters. Karr made her debut as a songwriter with the release of Kin: Songs by Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell. She is an in-demand speaker on her career, writing, alcoholism, mental health, faith and spirituality, Catholicism, sexual abuse, and as a commencement speaker.A born raconteur, Karr brings to her lectures and talks the same wit, irreverence, joy, and sorrow found in her poetry and prose. A sought-after keynote speaker, she has given distinguished talks about writing and her career at prestigious universities, libraries, and writers’ festivals, including Harvard University, Oxford University, Princeton University, Brown University, Syracuse University (“On Salmon Rushdie” with Salmon Rushdie), the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Folger Library (Poetry Society of America/Emily Dickinson Lecture), The New Yorker Literary Festival, PEN/Faulkner, and the Festival of Faith and Writing. She has been the keynote speaker about her alcoholism and recovery to both the medical profession and the recovery community, and has spoken extensively about her unlikely conversion to Catholicism. Karr welcomes conversation with her audience and she is known for her spirited, lively, and engaging Q&A sessions.

For availability and speaker fees, please contact Mary Karr’s speaking agent at Chartwell here, or call +1 972 385 1021 for U.S. inquiries or +44 207 293 0864 for international inquiries.

Mary Karr: The 2016 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-in-Residence

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Mary Karr, Ph.D. Keynote Speaker

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