St. Francis College and BookCourt welcomed author Charles Baxter (Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, The Feast of Love, Believers) as the latest speaker in the Walt Whitman Writers Series on October 21.

Watch the Charles Baxter Reading

"Charles Baxter's fictional world is energized by oddness," said St. Francis College English Professor Jason Dubow, who organized the event with fellow professors Theo Gangi and Ian Maloney. "He captures it in his people, his places, his things; he honors it; he makes it both beautifully ordinary and exquisitely extraordinary. Time spent in Baxter's world will surely enlarge your own."

A multifaceted author, Baxter has written five novels, five short story collections, three poetry collections and two collections of essays on fiction. His next book, There's Something I Want You to Do: Stories, is due out early next year.

Baxter taught at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor before taking on his current job at the University of Minnesota where he teaches creative writing and English classes.

He has won numerous awards including National Book Award Finalist (The Feast of Love), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Baxter is the eleventh writer to visit St. Francis for the Walt Whitman Series which continues to bring top contemporary authors to Brooklyn Heights to share their work and writing experiences with students, faculty and the entire Brooklyn community. Previous authors include George Saunders, James Salter, Colum McCann, Ben Marcus, Dinaw Mengestu, Kate Christensen, Julie Orringer, Jonathan Lethem, Darcey Steinke, and Rick Moody.

The Walt Whitman Series is a continuation of St. Francis College's commitment to supporting Brooklyn's literary community. In addition to visits by these authors, the College also offers the biennial $50,000 St. Francis College Literary Prize and helps sponsor and host events for the Brooklyn Book Festival; giving students, faculty and the entire Brooklyn community a front row seat to some of the best and most diverse professional writers at work today.