EXETER, NH (May 11, 2009)—On Thursday, May 21, 2009, at 7 p.m., Fiona McFarlane, recipient of the 2008 George Bennett Fellowship, a one-year writing residency sponsored by Phillips Exeter Academy, will read from her work. Sponsored by the Friends of the Academy Library, the reading will take place in the Class of 1945 Library on Front Street. This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Born in Sydney, Australia, McFarlane earned a bachelor’s in English from Sydney University, and a doctorate in American literature from Cambridge University. Before coming to Exeter, she spent two years as a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a National Magazine Award in fiction, and she has received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts and the Harper-Wood Studentship in English Literature. McFarlane’s stories have been published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Southerly, Island, and Cambridge University’s Mays Anthology, and produced for radio in Australia and the United Kingdom.

The Bennett Fellowship, established in 1967, provides time and freedom from material considerations to a person seriously contemplating or pursuing a career as a writer. For more information about the fellowship, contact Ralph Sneeden, Bennett Fellowship coordinator and English instructor, at (603) 777-4329 or visit the Bennett Fellows web page.

For further information about the reading, contact Jacquelyn H. Thomas, Academy Librarian, at 603-777-3328 or visit the library’s website page. A complete list of upcoming events is available on the Phillips Exeter Academy public events line at 603-777-4309 and on our website’s news and events page. For directions, call 603-777-4330.