GALESBURG -- Award winning journalist and fiction writer Jane Ciabattari will give two free, public talks at Knox College during a four-day residency, Oct 22-25.

Ciabattari, who is a contributing editor of Parade Magazine, will read from her new short story collection, "Stealing the Fire," at 4 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 23, in the Common Room, Old Main. She will give a lecture, "Telling Truth Through Fiction," at 4 p.m., Friday, Oct 24, in the Common Room.

Ciabattari's editing career has included positions as managing editor of California Living, the Sunday Magazine of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle; managing editor of Redbook; and editor in chief of DIAL, the public television magazine. She is on the board of the Overseas Press Club and of Women's Enews, an online news service.

For Parade she has traveled to Havana, Hong Kong, Marrakech, Paris, Prague, Rome, and Shanghai. Among her interview subjects are former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and South African leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu; authors Sherman Alexie and Isabel Allende; actors Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock, Renee Zellweger, John Cusack, Sylvester Stallone, Emma Thompson, and Michael Douglas; and musicians Aretha Franklin and B.B. King.

Ciabattari's short fiction has appeared in The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Blueline and other magazines. Redbook nominated her for a National Magazine Award, and Hampton Shorts magazine honored her with an editors' choice "Stubby" award for originality.

"It is through stories that we learn about other cultures and begin to connect and care about those outside our borders," Ciabattari has written. "Journalists, our town criers, use facts, logical arguments, vivid details, and analysis... Fiction writers, who like artists, are the antennae of our culture, use image, metaphor, symbol, narrative, point of view, and magical realism."

Both fiction and non-fiction, Ciabattari has written, "are ways of bearing witness... moving people emotionally and intellectually... toward action."

A native of Kansas, Ciabattari has received fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught fiction workshops at Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Borderlands Writers' Workshop in Tenants Harbor, Maine, and was a fiction writer in residence at the Chautauqua Institution's Writers' Center this past summer.

Ciabattari has a B.A. in creative writing from Stanford and an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Her book reviews appear in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.

Ciabattari will be at Knox from Wednesday, Oct. 22 through Saturday, Oct. 25, talking with students and speaking at journalism classes.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 42 nations. Knox's 'Old Main' is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Jane Ciabattari
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