Tickets go on sale Friday for the 12th annual Winter Words series of author readings and talks. This “Intellectual Stimulus Package” features a line-up of star-studded authors including Augusten Burroughs, Jeffrey Eugenides, Andrew Sean Greer, Sara Gruen, Jane Hirshfield, and Scott Turow in unforgettable stand-alone events taking place from January through April 2009. Single tickets are just $10-$15 and may be purchased online through Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler Opera House. Season subscriptions for all six events may be purchased in person at the Wheeler Opera House box office for $70-$80.

THE DETAILS
All Winter Words events are held at 5:30 pm (doors open at 5 pm) and include a public reading and talk, followed by a short Q&A and a book signing. After each Winter Words event is the Author Salon, a series of receptions at a private home honoring the author of the evening. Author Salon tickets are available exclusively for members of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation and may be purchased in person at the Wheeler House box office (970.920.5770). Annual memberships, starting at $100, are accepted at any time of the year.

THE AUTHORS
“Combined, these impressive inventors have sold over 40 million books in dozens of languages worldwide,” raves Lisa Consiglio, executive director of the AWF. “It is a million-dollar lineup, and for good reason – they are insightful, passionate, adventurous, dramatic, skillful, thoughtful and wildly popular all at once.”

Scott Turow |Thursday, January 29
Considered a master of the legal thriller, Scott Turow is the author of seven best-selling novels including, Presumed Innocent, The Laws of Our Fathers, Personal Injuries, Reversible Errors, and two works of non-fiction: One L and Ultimate Punishment. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages, sold more than 25 million copies world-wide, and have been adapted into one full length film and two television mini-series. Turow’s books have also won a number of literary awards, including the Heartland Prize in 2003 for Reversible Errors, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Ultimate Punishment and Time Magazine’s Best Work of Fiction for Personal Injuries. In his latest work, Limitations, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law, but also of human understanding itself.

Jane Hirshfield | Thursday, February 5
The author of six collections of poetry, Jane Hirshfield speaks to the central issues of human existence — desire and loss, impermanence and beauty, the many dimensions of our connection to others and to the creatures and objects with which we share our lives. Her most recent book, After, was shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Prize, nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, and also chosen as one of the best books of 2006 by The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the London Financial Times. In fall 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets, an honor formerly held by such poets as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop.

Sara Gruen | Thursday, March 5
Sara Gruen is the author of the wildly dramatic and entertaining historic novel Water for Elephants, a New York Times #1 bestselling sensation that has sold over 2.5 million copies and has been translated into over 38 different languages. Along with its nomination as Entertainment Weekly’s Best Novel of the Year in 2006, Water for Elephants was nominated for two Quill Awards in 2006 and won the Book Sense of the Year Award in 2007. Her first novel, Riding Lessons, was a USA Today bestseller and was followed by a sequel, Flying Changes. Her much anticipated fourth novel, Ape House, is due out this summer.

Jeffrey Eugenides | Wednesday, March 18
Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of The Virgin Suicides and the mega-bestseller, Middlesex. Published to acclaim in 1993, The Virgin Suicides has been translated into fifteen languages and made into a feature film. After nine years of research, Eugenides published Middlesex, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, France’s Prix Medici, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, The Gettysburg Review, and Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists.” Eugenides is currently a Professor in Creative Writing at the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University.

Andrew Sean Greer | Thursday, March 26
Andrew Sean Greer is the author of the national bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a best book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune, and was a Today Show Book Club Selection. His other works include How It Was For Me and The Path of Minor Planets, and his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. Greer is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship, a California Book Award, and a New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. His most recent novel, The Story of a Marriage, was chosen as a summer reading pick by both The Today Show and NPR, and is one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2008.

Augusten Burroughs | Thursday, April 2
Brash and bold, Augusten Burroughs is the notorious author of the shockingly honest memoir Running with Scissors, which spent over four consecutive years on the New York Times bestseller list, including eight months at #1. The film, starring Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow and Alec Baldwin, was released in 2005. Burroughs has since published four additional bestselling autobiographical volumes (Dry, Possible Side Effects, Magical Thinking and A Wolf at the Table). Entertainment Weekly has twice named him one of America’s 25 funniest people and his novel, Sellevision, is currently in development as a feature film.

TICKETS
Ticket levels include:
• Winter Words single tickets:
$15 individual; $10 student/educator with current school I.D.
• Winter Words season subscription (all six events, up to 23% savings):
$70 AWF members; $80 non-members
• Author Salon (includes Winter Words reading and talk plus a reception in a private home honoring the author):
$40 single ticket; $200 series (all six events and receptions, a 17% savings) -
for AWF members only

Tickets, season subscriptions and Author Salon after-party passes will go on sale Friday, December 5 through Aspen Show Tickets at the Wheeler Opera House (970.920.5770, toll-free 866.449.0464). Information and group ticket sales are available through the Aspen Writers’ Foundation at 970.925.3122.

THE ASPEN WRITERS’ FOUNDATION
The Aspen Writers’ Foundation, Colorado’s oldest nonprofit literary organization, has been bringing readers and writers together since 1976. The organization’s mission is to provide programs that encourage writers in their craft and readers in their appreciation of literature. Through its repertoire of ten year-round programs and projects, the Aspen Writers’ Foundation serves 20,000+ literary enthusiasts of all ages annually.