To purchase tickets:
- Visit our online ticketing website by clicking the link to your ticket choice below;
- Call the Pen Pals box office at 612.543.8112 (M – F, 9 am – 5 pm);
- Visit the Friends of HCL offices at the Minneapolis Central Library, Room N-290 (M – F, 9 am – 5 pm).
Individual tickets are $40 for balcony and $50 for main floor. An exclusive wine/appetizer post-reception with the author can be purchased for an additional $25 for Thursday night lectures. A public signing is offered after the Friday daytime lectures only, open to all attendees.
Friends of HCL members can receive a discount of $5 per ticket and $10 per subscription. To receive your discount, please call 612.543.8112.
Pen Pals: Wallace Shawn
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7:30 pm
Friday, March 16, 2012, 11 am
Wallace Shawn wears two hats. He is beloved for his comedic roles as a film and stage actor, in such works as My Dinner with Andre and The Princess Bride. A playwright and an essayist, he is revered for his exploration of difficult, often controversial themes. Much of his writing in his collection Essays (2009) has the same cadence as the dialogue in his award-winning plays and screenplays — bold assertions, often provocative, that outrage and even startle.
Pen Pals: Dr. Brian Greene
Thursday, April 19, 2012, 7:30 pm
Friday, April 20, 2012, 11 am
Dr. Brian Greene is one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists and author of the national bestsellers, The Elegant Universe and The Hidden Reality. A brilliant, entertaining communicator of cutting-edge scientific concepts, Greene was described by The Washington Post as “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.” He co-founded the annual World Science Festival “to make the esoteric understandable and the familiar fascinating to the general public.”
Pen Pals: Arthur Phillips
Thursday, May 10, 2012, 7:30 pm
Friday, May 11, 2012, 11 am
Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, and a five-time Jeopardy champion. His first novel, Prague, was named a New York Times Notable Book and received the Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. Author of five novels, including Egyptologist, The Song is You, and The Tragedy of Arthur, his work has been translated into twenty-five languages.
Pen Pals: Jhumpa Lahiri Thursday, October 27, 2011, 7:30 pm Friday, October 28, 2011, 11 am Jhumpa Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection that explores issues of love and identity among immigrants and cultural transplants. Alongside her Pulitzer Prize, Jhumpa Lahiri has won numerous awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her second novel,The Namesake, was published to great acclaim in 2003 and adapted for film in 2007.
Pen Pals: Michael Ondaatje Thursday, December 1, 2011, 7:30 pm Friday, December 2, 2011, 11 am Michael Ondaatje is one of the world’s foremost writers — his artistry and aesthetic have influenced an entire generation of writers and readers. Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje’s work also encompasses memoir, poetry, and film, and reveals a passion for defying conventional form. His novelThe English Patient, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His forthcoming novel, The Cat’s Table, will be published in the US in the fall of 2011.