George Mason University's Center for the Arts

Novelist, poet and filmmaker Sherman Alexie, named by The New Yorker as one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century, will receive this year’s Mason Award and read selections from his work.

Graphic novelist Peter Kuper explores the history of comics as political art and offers a visual tour of the art he produced while living in Oaxaca, Mexico, when striking teachers and federal troops clashed.

Visit Peter Kupers website at http://www.peterkuper.com/

María Eugenia Verdaguer, a Program Officer for the Fulbright Program in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, discusses her new book Class, Ethnicity, Gender and Latino Entrepreneurship.

Susan Donaldson, a professor of English and American literature at William & Mary, explores the photography of Eudora Welty.

E.L. Doctorow, author of The March, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, will receive the 2009 Fairfax Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts and read from his forthcoming novel, Homer & Langley.