Humanities dinner to feature writer Anthony Doerr

Prize-winning writer Anthony Doerr will be the speaker at the Idaho Humanities Council's ninth annual Northern Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture and Dinner at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12 at The Coeur d'Alene Resort.

Tickets are available online, www.idahohumanities.org, or by calling the IHC at (888) 345-5346. General tickets are $45. Benefactor tickets are $100, offering an invitation to a pre-dinner reception with Doerr in a private home and close-up seating at the dinner and lecture.

The event will begin with a no-host reception at 6 p.m. at The Coeur d'Alene Resort. Dinner will begin at 7 p.m. with Doerr's talk to follow.

Doerr's books include "The Shell Collector," a short story collection; "About Grace," a novel; "Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins," a memoir; "Insomnia" and the "Biggest Funeral in the History of the World."

His latest written collection is "Memory Wall," which features stories set on four different continents, each about the fragility of collective and personal memory. The book won the 2010 Story Prize, and the title story of the collection currently is being adapted as a feature film.

Doerr's short fiction has won four O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, the 2010 Story Prize, and the 2011 London Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, which is considered the largest prize in the world for a single short story. In 2007, the British literary magazine Granta placed Doerr on its list of 21 Best Young American novelists.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at Bowdoin College in Maine, Doerr lives in Boise with his wife and two sons. His book reviews and travel essays appear in the New York Times. He also writes a regular column on science books for the Boston Globe.

The Idaho Humanities Council is a nonprofit organization serving as the state-based affiliate of National Endowment for the Humanities.