ALEXANDRIA, La. (WNTZ) – Louisiana State University of Alexandria’s College of Liberal Arts, in partnership with the Cenla Authors Club, will welcome acclaimed author Robert Olen Butler as the featured speaker for the Cavanaugh Lecture Series on Thursday, Oct. 2.

The event will take place in LSUA’s Coughlin Auditorium, beginning at 6 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, has published 16 novels, including A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which earned him the Pulitzer for fiction. Over his career, Butler has received numerous accolades, among them the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two National Magazine Awards in fiction, and multiple Pushcart Prizes.

His stories and essays have appeared in leading publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, and GQ. Beyond his fiction, Butler authored From Where You Dream, a collection of his creative writing lectures, and spent more than a decade working in screenwriting for studios and networks including Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal Pictures, and HBO.

The Cavanaugh Lecture Series brings distinguished voices in literature and the arts to Central Louisiana, continuing LSUA’s tradition of connecting the community with nationally recognized authors and thinkers.