Best-selling author Amy Tan to be honored by FIU in April

Critically acclaimed author Amy Tan will visit FIU Thursday, April 3 to receive the Creative Writing Program’s Lawrence Sanders Award for Fiction.

The event, which will include a public discussion with the author of The Joy Luck Club, begins at 8 p.m. in the Wolfe University Center at the Biscayne Bay Campus. The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are required.

To RSVP, visit sandersaward2014.eventbrite.com.

Born in the United States to immigrant parents from China,  Tan rejected her parent’s expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. The Joy Luck Club was published in 1989 and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for many months. She has since written six more best-selling novels, two children’s books and several works of non-fiction. Tan’s much-loved novels have been translated into 35 languages.

In 2008, she wrote a libretto for The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which premiered that year with the San Francisco Opera. Tan was the creative consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated PBS series for children, and is the lead rhythm dominatrix, backup singer and second tambourine with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a literary garage band that has raised more than a million dollars for literacy programs.

“Amy Tan embodies the very spirit of the Sanders Award.  Her work is entertaining, moving, and profoundly accomplished,” said Les Standiford, founding director of the FIU Creative Writing Program. “It is our joy and our great good luck to have her with us.”

Tan will be the fifth recipient of the Lawrence Sanders Award. This award, made possible by an endowment from the Lawrence A. Sanders Foundation of Boca Raton, recognizes fiction writers whose work combines literary excellence with popular appeal. Past recipients are bestselling writers Scott Turow, Pat Conroy, Isabel Allende and Richard Ford.