MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or at w-leopold@northwestern.edu

March 23, 2004

Science Fiction Writer Delaney to Deliver Forrest Lecture

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Critic, scholar and novelist Samuel R. Delany will deliver the 2004 Leon Forrest Lecture Thursday, April 15, at Northwestern University. One of few gay, African American writers working in the genre of science fiction, Delany is among the most important and prolific voices in African American literature in the last 30 years.

Delany’s free, public lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the Abbott Auditorium of the Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life Sciences Pavilion, 2200 Campus Drive, Evanston. A reception will follow. Delany’s lecture coincides with a conference on “The Politics of the Paraliterary: A Symposium on Afro-Diasporic Speculative Fiction and Theory,” Friday, April 16, from 2 to 6 p.m. on the University’s Evanston campus.

Delany published “The Jewels of Aptor,” his first book, in 1962 at the age of 20. By age 26, he had received four Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for novels “Babel-17” and “The Einstein Intersection” and two short stories. Many credit him with redefining the science fiction and speculative literature genres.

The Harlem-born Delany briefly explored a career in music before returning three years later to writing intellectually demanding science fiction and pushing the genre in a new direction. His controversial 1975 novel “Dhalgren” broke literary ground and sold more than a million copies. It was followed in 1976 by “Triton: An Ambiguous Heteropia,” which was simultaneously received as a masterpiece and as unreadable and put Delany in league with science fiction blockbuster writers Arthur Clark and Ursula LeGuin.

In 1993, Delany was awarded the William Whitehead Memorial Award for his lifetime contributions to gay and lesbian literature. For further information, call the African American studies department at (847) 467-5122.