March 23, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Bitingly funny author of The Partly Cloudy Patriot and This American Life commentator Sarah Vowell reads at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- Sarah Vowell
- A witty and perceptive, best-selling author
- Vowell is the author of Take the Cannoli and The Partly Cloudy Patriot
- She is one of the highlights of public radio’s This American Life
- Saturday, April 24
- 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- General public $25 / UCSB students $15
- Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535
Shrewdly comic social observer and author Sarah Vowell—called a “national treasure” by David Sedaris—will read from her work on Saturday, April 24 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. A contributing editor and one of the on-air highlights of public radio’s This American Life since 1996, she has written about everything from her father’s homemade cannon to the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears forced march, from Al Gore to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This author of the perceptive and witty bestsellers Radio On: A Listener’s Diary, Take the Cannoli and The Partly Cloudy Patriot has been called “a cranky stylist with talent to burn” by Newsweek magazine, while People writes, “Wise, witty and refreshingly warm-hearted, Vowell’s essays on American history, pop culture and her own family reveal the bonds holding together a great, if occasionally weird, nation.”
Vowell’s most recent collection The Partly Cloudy Patriot was released in paperback in October 2003. In the book’s title piece she admits that unlike Thomas Paine’s non-ambivalent sunshine patriot, “My ideal picture of citizenship will always be an argument, not a sing-along.” Always able to explore and explain the complexity of an issue, Vowell finds insight and humor through idiosyncrasy and irony. In its review of the book Salon.com claims, “Sarah Vowell does a bang-up job of being a good American without being a terrible bore. A solid thinker with a warm heart and a smart mouth, she loves the U.S. in much the same way that one loves one’s family (or perhaps a favorite flea-bitten old dog)—acutely aware of its many shortcomings, but true-blue to the end.”
As a critic and reporter, Vowell has published in numerous newspapers and magazines including Esquire, GQ, Artforum, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Spin and McSweeney’s. As a columnist, she has covered education for Time; American culture for Salon.com; and pop music for the San Francisco Weekly, for which she won a 1996 Music Journalism Award. She has taught writing and art history at Sarah Lawrence College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago respectively.
Vowell has performed her comic monologues at the Aspen Comedy Festival, Amsterdam’s Crossing Borders Festival, and Seattle’s Foolproof Comedy Festival. She has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Nightline, which aired her appeal to television producers not to commemorate Frank Sinatra’s death with her least favorite song “My Way” on the day Sinatra died. A native of Oklahoma and Montana, and a long-time resident of Chicago, Vowell currently lives in New York City.
In UCSB Arts & Lectures’ on-going effort to make events accessible to all who wish to enjoy them, this reading will be signed. Sign language interpretation is made possible by the California Arts Council in collaboration with the National Arts and Disability Center and by the Santa Barbara Foundation’s Access Theatre Endowment Fund.
Courtesy of Borders, books by Sarah Vowell will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Sarah Vowell is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by KCLU Public Radio, the Santa Barbara Inn and Borders Books. Tickets for Sarah Vowell are $25 for the general public and $10 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.