Book discussion group to begin on Tempe campus

A new book discussion group will be started beginning Sept. 28, during the noon hour at the Piper Writers House on ASU's Tempe campus.

The group will be open to anyone in the ASU community who is interested in participating. It will meet on the last Wednesday of every month at lunchtime. (Exact times will be selected during the first meeting.)

The group will be sponsored by the Department of English and the Piper Center for Creative Writing and ASU writers will be invited to discuss their works.

There will be a contest to name the discussion group. Entries may be submitted by 5 p.m., Sept. 21 to Judith Smith, jps@asu.edu, or MC 5011. The prize is an autographed, hard-bound copy of Melissa Pritchard’s book of stories, “Disappearing Ingénue.”

The first book to be discussed, on Sept. 28, will be Jewell Parker Rhodes’s “Ninth Ward,” a novel for young readers about 12-year-old Lanesha, who lives in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward with Mama Ya-Ya and goes through Hurricane Katrina. The book was chosen as a 2011 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book.

For more information, contact Judith Smith, jps@asu.edu, or (480) 965-4821.