Topic:“The End: Authorship, Nostalgia, and the Beatles”
Location: President’s Hall, The Penn Stater
Introduction / Moderator: Rodney Erickson / Patty Satalia
Kenneth Womack is the author of two novels, John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel (2010), which earnedForeWord Reviews’ Bronze Award for Literary Fiction, and The Restaurant at the End of the World (2012), which won the Gold Medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Regional Fiction. He is also the author or editor of numerous works of nonfiction, including Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (2007) and The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (2009), which was named as The Independent’s “Music Book of the Year.”
Ken’s latest novel, Playing the Angel, will be published in the fall of 2013. His next Beatles-related work, The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four, will be released in February 2014 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Ken is Professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State University’s Altoona College, where he also serves as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. He is Editor ofInterdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory, published by Penn State University Press, and Co-Editor of Oxford University Press’s prodigious Year’s Work in English Studies.
Over the years, his work as teacher and writer has earned numerous awards, including Penn State University’s Alumni Teaching Fellow Award (2006), Northern Illinois University’s Golden Anniversary Alumni Award (2009), Penn State Altoona’s Honorary Alumni Award (2009), and the Kjell Meling Award for Distinction in the Arts and Humanities (2010). In 2013, Ken was selected to serve as the sixth Penn State University Laureate.
In addition to studying Russian language and literature at the Moscow Institute of Communications, Ken earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in English from Northern Illinois University. He lives in Altoona, Pennsylvania, with his wife Jeanine and their family.