Ohio Wesleyan Professor’s Novel Noted in New York Times’ Bestseller List
Robert Olmstead
DELAWARE, Ohio – It’s one for the books this week for Ohio Wesleyan University’s Robert Olmstead. Make that two.
Olmstead, a professor of English and director of OWU’s Creative Writing Program, is noted in The New York Times’ May 19 “Paperback Row” for his acclaimed novel, “The Coldest Night.”
After the novel’s release, Mike Peed of The New York Times wrote that Olmstead’s elegant writing “makes you wonder if Olmstead was meant to be a poet. But Olmstead is a novelist, and a very good one.”
The OWU faculty member also is among 10 Ohio authors being featured May 11 at the seventh annual Ohioana Book Festival, where it will announced that “The Coldest Night” is a finalist for the 2013 Ohioana Book Award in the category of fiction. Winners will be announced in late August or early September.
The festival, presented by the Ohioana Library, will be held from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, 546 Jack Gibbs Blvd., Columbus. Admission is free.
“The Coldest Night” is part of a trilogy by Olmstead that also includes “Far Bright Star” and “Coal Black Horse,” which earned a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction. “Far Bright Star” was named one of the Top Ten Westerns of the Decade by Booklist, the magazine of the American Library Association, and “The Coldest Night” was a 2012 Publishers Weekly pick for best books of the year.
Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier small, private universities. Ohio Wesleyan offers more than 90 undergraduate majors, sequences, and courses of study, and 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. OWU combines an internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities that connect classroom theory with real-world practice. Located in Delaware, Ohio, OWU’s 1,850 students represent 41 states and 45 countries. The university is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, and included on the “best colleges” lists of U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. Learn more at www.owu.edu.