Novelist and Memoirist Andrew Krivak to Speak at Holy Cross

Novelist and memoirist Andrew Krivak will give a talk about the vocation of the writer on Wednesday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross.  The event, which is cosponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Culture, is free and open to the public.

Andrew Krivak is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in The New York Times, DoubleTake, Commonweal, and elsewhere.  A graduate of St. John’s College, Annapolis, and the Writing Program at Columbia University, he also holds a Ph.D. in Modern Literature from Rutgers University.

His 2008 memoir, The Long Retreat, tells the story of his journey through eight years of contemporary religious life as a Jesuit, a journey that ended when he left the order.  Pondering the search for God as well as the search for self, Krivak discovers the deep connections between the solitude of the spiritual life and the solitude of the writer’s life.  Patricia Hampl, author of Virgin Time, remarks: “Andrew Krivak conveys his own ardent search while also capturing the fragmented spirit of our times, making his ‘long retreat’ the occasion for a wise, tough and sometimes refreshingly comic meditation on faith. I read it like a detective story, unable to put it down--and then unable (and unwilling) to stop thinking about its lingering questions.”

Krivak’s first novel, The Sojourn, which recounts one soldier’s experiences during World War One, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press this spring.