Award-winning novelist DBC Pierre will speak on the University of Stirling campus on Monday 14th November in the Pathfoot Lecture Theatre. The 6:30 PM event – a reading, interview and Q&A session – is free and open to the public. The event will be followed by a book signing. Doors open at 6 PM, and no tickets are required.
DBC Pierre’s visit is supported by the university and the Booker Prize Foundation. This year, for the first time, Stirling was selected to be one of only five U.K. institutions taking part in the Booker Prize Foundation’s Universities Initiative. Our colleagues in the Creative Writing department have been instrumental in organising this initiative, which involved all first-year students at Stirling, regardless of their course of study, receiving copies of Pierre’s novel Vernon God Little. Students have consequently been invited to attend student-led reading groups discussing the book in the week before his visit.
Vernon God Little won the Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction and – controversially – the 2003 Man Booker Prize. The Man Booker judges described it as a “coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm but also our fascination with America.”
Professor Gerry McCormac, Principal and Vice Chancellor, says: “I am delighted that the University is participating in the Booker Prize Foundation’s Universities Initiative. Created to introduce students to high quality, contemporary fiction, it allows students across our various disciplines to have a shared experience to encourage debate.”