Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author to Appear At UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler, author of the acclaimed work of short fiction about Vietnam, "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," will visit Buffalo this month to deliver two talks on his work.

The first talk, titled "Writing About Vietnamese in America," will be presented at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23, in 410 Clemens Hall on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus. It is sponsored by the Butler Chair in the UB Department of English, the UB Program in Asian Studies and the UB World Languages Institute.

That evening at 8 p.m., Butler will read from his new collection of stories, "Tabloid Dreams," at Hallwalls Center for Contemporary Arts, 2495 Main St., Buffalo. The talk is sponsored by the Butler Chair, the Program in Asian Studies, the World Languages Institute and Just Buffalo Literary Center.

"Good Scent," for which Butler received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, has been translated into a dozen languages, and optioned by Oliver Stone's Ixtland Productions. Noted director Wayne Wang is scheduled to direct the film, which is tentatively set to begin shooting at the end of this year. "Tabloid Dreams" is being developed as a series for HBO.

Butler has written screenplays for 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Paramount Studios, and has received several grants and awards for his work.

Vietnam has formed the background or foreground of much of Butler's writing. He served there as an army counter-intelligence linguist after finishing graduate school, and later as an administrative assistant to the U.S. Foreign Service officer who advised the mayor of Saigon.

At night, however, he roamed the steamy back alleys of Saigon, crouching in doorways and talking and listening to the Vietnamese, whom he calls the "warmest, most open and most generous-spirited people he'd ever met."

He was "discovered" by both the late Anatole Broyard, the daily book review editor for The New York Times, and Alan Cheuse, who produced a series for National Public Radio and encouraged Butler to write short fiction.