10/29/2002

With their first exhibition game on Friday vs Latvia, (McDonough 7:00 p.m.) the Hoyas delayed  practice today in order to attend a lecture. John Wideman was speaking as part of the Graduate School's Distinguished Lecturer Series on campus and Coach Esherick took the entire team and staff to hear Professor Wideman?s talk.

After a warm greeting from John J. Degioia, President of Georgetown University, Professor Wideman spoke for about an hour.  Discussing how writing and basketball were both analogies for and means of self-realization in his life, Professor Wideman read passages from several of his works. At the conclusion of his lecture, Professor Wideman took questions from the audience and met each of the members of the Hoyas? basketball team. 

?It?s important that the players take advantage of opportunities like this.? Coach Esherick said. ?This is a part of what Georgetown has to offer and I felt that it would be a mistake to miss it.?

John Wideman is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Wideman is the author of The Cattle Killing, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction; Philadelphia Fire, winner of both the PEN/Faulkner and American Book awards; and Sent for You Yesterday, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has published four other novels, an award-winning memoir, and numerous essay and short story collections. His articles have appeared in such media outlets as The New Yorker, Vogue, Esquire, Emerge, and the New York Times Magazine. Among his accomplishments, Professor Wideman was the second African American to win the Rhodes Scholarship, created the African-American Department at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including O. Henry Award for best short story of the year, a Reader?s Digest/Lila Wallace Grant, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Rea Prize for short fiction, and the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction.