The Big Read brings author Marilynne Robinson to Kansas City on Wednesday, May 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St., for a discussion of Housekeeping and her literary career with Angela Elam of New Letters on the Air, who will record the conversation before a live audience for later broadcast.

Robinson was born in Sandpoint, Idaho—a town that resembles many facets of the fictional Fingerbone community portrayed in her first novel. She is quoted as saying that she did not write Housekeeping for publication, but a fellow writer submitted the manuscript to an agent without her knowledge.

Robinson earned the Pen/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel. Gilead, her second novel, won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award and her latest novel, Home, earned the prestigious Orange Prize in the U.K. She belongs to the faculty at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

This presentation is a Bradbury Speaker Series event. The series was established by the Friends of the Kansas City Public Library in honor of former library director Dan Bradbury to present outstanding speakers with a variety of viewpoints to engage, stimulate, and enlighten.

The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.