Albee first hit it big with his 1959 play, The Zoo Story. Along with his other early works such as The Sandbox (1959) and The American Dream (1960), The Zoo Story effectively gave birth to American absurdist drama. Another well-known Albee play is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). He won Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance (1966) and Seascape (1975). Three Tall Women (1994) won Albee his third Pulitzer Prize, as well as Best Play awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle and Outer Critics Circle. His work has also won Obie and Tony awards.

Prose is the author of fourteen books of fiction, including, most recently, A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the national bestseller The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired. A recipient of numerous grants and awards, among them Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, Prose was a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Wright is the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Chickamauga, his eleventh collection of poems, won the 1996 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His other books include Buffalo Yoga (2004); Negative Blue (2000); Appalachia (1998); Black Zodiac (1997), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990; Country Music: Selected Early Poems (1983), which won the National Book Award; Hard Freight (1973), which was nominated for the National Book Award; and two volumes of criticism: Halflife (1988) and Quarter Notes (1995). His translation of Eugenio Montale's The Storm and Other Poems (1978) was awarded the PEN Translation Prize. His many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 1999 he was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

The schedule for the 2005 Fall Festival of Authors at USC includes:

• Oct. 26
  6 p.m., Reading, talk, Q&A session with Edward Albee, Law School Auditorium
  7 p.m., Book signing
  
  
• Oct. 27
  6 p.m., Reading, talk, Q&A session with Charles Wright, Law School Auditorium
  7 p.m., Book signing
  
  
• Oct. 28
  3 p.m., MFA Sixty-Minute Bistro,
  Gervais and Vine, 620 Gervais Street
  Be dazzled by short readings from USC's best MFA students in poetry and fiction.
  
  
• Oct. 28
  6 p.m., Reading, talk, Q&A session with Francine Prose, Law School Auditorium
  7 p.m., Book signing.
  

For more information, call the Thomas Cooper Library at 7-3142.

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