Award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer Jennifer Vanderbes will give a reading on Thursday, March 14, as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The event will be held at 7:30 pm in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium.

A former Guggenheim fellow, Jennifer Vanderbes is the author of three novels: The Secret of Raven Point (2014), Strangers at the Feast (2010), and Easter Island (2003). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Granta and The Atlantic. Her forthcoming nonfiction book, The Gatekeeper, about the thalidomide scandal of the 1960s, has been awarded a grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and will be published by Random House and HarperCollins UK. Vanderbes’ work has been translated into 16 languages.

Vanderbes’ first novel, Easter Island, was named a “Best Book of 2003” by The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. Of her most recent novel, The Secret of Raven Point, Kirkus Reviews writes: “Part mystery, part coming-of-age tale, part World War II novel, Vanderbes’…moving latest novel…is an empathetic, oblique take on the layers of damage done during war…unusual and affecting.”

Jennifer Vanderbes received her B.A. in English Literature from Yale and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She currently lives in New York City.