Thomas Lynch speaks on “Matters of Life and Death” as part of the free William Woods University President’s Lecture Series.
Lynch serves as a funeral home director in Milford, Mich., and is a noted writer and speaker. He is the author of numerous works: “The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade,” “Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality,” “Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans” and “Still Life: A Collection of Poems.” He is a gifted communicator whose stories, both humorous and poignant, are windows into all that is beautiful and tragic about our lives.
Lynch’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Times of London, as well as in the pages of Harper’s. He has also appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC, the NBC “Today” program and the PBS series “On Our Own Terms.” His work was featured on “Frontline” this past year, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/undertaking/.
March 26, 2009 – 7 p.m.
Cutlip Auditorium
William Woods University
Learn more about Lynch at www.thomaslynch.com. Find directions to the university and a campus map at www.williamwoods.edu.
Praise for Thomas Lynch:
“With Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans, Tom Lynch proves yet again why he is one of the most important writers in the English language. Whether writing of the wonders of indoor plumbing added to his ancestral home in County Clare, or of a solemn funeral procession in the American desert southwest, or a young man’s quest for a job in Dublin, Mr. Lynch reveals time and again, in a voice riven with joy and sorrow and, above all, wisdom, what it means not just to be American or Irish, but human. I wish Tom Lynch wrote more books, because no mater what he writes – whether essays or poems – I am made better for it.”
– Brett Lott, author of A Song I Knew by Heart and Jewel
“Mr. Lynch emerges as a cross between Garrison Keillor and one of the Irish poets; one things of William Butler Yeats….forceful, authentic and full of a kind of ethical and aesthetic clarity.”
– Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
“The year in literature may not produce a better opening line – “Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople’ and the rest of The Undertaking lives up to that earthshaking start….’ A memoir that is standout superb even in an era thick with first personages.”
– Esquire
“Lynch writes beautifully and arrestingly about death because he seems to know so much about life.”
– Elle