KOWLOON TONG, Hong Kong – On April 28, there's a chance to encounter literary greatness at the City University of Hong Kong. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler will read and engage in discussion at an “exclusive literary event” (6:30 to 8:30 p.m., Wei Hing Theatre, Floor 6, Amenities Building).

Butler's story collection, A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It portrays the lives of Vietnamese immigrants living in New Orleans amid the shadows of war, cultural impasses and powerful memories.

Known for fierce dedication, Butler has been called America's “best living author”. His last book, Weegee Stories, appeared in 2010. A new novel, A Small Hotel, follows this August. His output totals 11 novels, five volumes of short fiction and From Where You Dream, a series of lectures about creative processes.

Butler served in Vietnam as a counter-intelligence agent for the U.S. Army and as a translator. Since then, he received the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America for outstanding contributions to culture by a war veteran.

At other times, he toiled as a steelworker, taxi driver, substitute teacher and even editor of the Energy User News. He lives in Capps, Florida, where he recently became the mayor.

The coming event, the second in City University's Pulitzer Prize Speaker Series, is free and open to the public. A reception to meet the author follows.

Where better to be on the night in question than in Butler's audience? Why not take a gander at literary greatness?


The author has ways of fitting right into his fiction.

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