Nov. 2, 2007

Author Brian Bedard to read his stories at Morningside

Dr. Brian Bedard, a published author, editor of the South Dakota Review, and English professor at the University of South Dakota, will share some of his short stories set in this region at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7, in the UPS Auditorium of Morningside College’s Lincoln Center, 3627 Peters Ave.

The public is invited to the free event, which is sponsored by Morningside’s Academic and Cultural Arts Series (ACAS).

Bedard’s book, “Grieving on the Run,” won the 2006 Serena McDonald Kennedy Fiction Award from Snake Nation Press in Valdosta, Ga. It is his second published collection of stories, though previous stories were published in literary journals across the nation. He has been nominated more than once for the Pushcart Prize.

Bedard was invited to Sioux City by Dr. Steve Coyne, a professor of English at Morningside College who is using “Grieving on the Run” in a creative writing class he is teaching this semester.

“His stories have a lot of rich Midwestern texture,” Coyne said. “He’s a good reader – a good performer – and I thought he would be a good example for students both for what he does on the page and what he does on the stage.”

Bedard plans to share from his book one piece of fiction inspired by a record-setting catfish mounted in a glass display case at Missouri River Aquarium in Yankton, S.D., and another sparked by a long string of round hay bales in a field adjacent to Interstate 29 between Beresford and Sioux Falls.

“The first story is about a young South Dakota sportswoman whose uncle is dying in a rest home while she is fishing for catfish, as he taught her to do,” Bedard said. “The second story is about an alcoholic corn farmer and his adventures in a Vermillion bar and in the countryside outside of Vermillion in the course of one evening.”

Bedard is originally from Missoula, Montana, and holds degrees in English and creative writing from both the University of Montana and the University of Utah. He has taught in the English department at the University of South Dakota since 1990.