Michelle Latiolais signs books at
Literary Luncheon

On February 24, author Michelle Latiolais was featured in a talk about her novel, A Proper Knowledge, at the Libraries’ 5th annual Literary Luncheon. The event was held at the home of Doreen Hamburger, who prepared a delicious meal for an engaged group of Library Partners and friends. Guests also received a signed copy of the book.

Latiolais is Professor of English at UC Irvine, where she co-directs the Programs in Writing, which have produced many excellent award-winning writers—herself included. She is the author of numerous short stories, published most recently in Western Humanities Review and Green Mountains Review, as well as her first novel, Even Now, which won the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California.

Michelle Latiolais and Doreen Hamburger

A Proper Knowledge is the story of a gifted psychiatrist who, haunted by the death of his young sister, seeks to penetrate the mysteries of childhood autism. A beautifully written, insightful investigation into the misunderstood pathways of the brain--and the heart, the novel explores how death can bind a family together even as it tears its individual members apart; how guilt can lead to creative--or destructive--acts, and how the search for love carries with it the potential for a cure.

Latiolais described what initially led her to write the book. “Where does personality--even eccentricity--end and pathology begin?” she said. “That question gnaws at the margins in A Proper Knowledge but I think a different question took over as I wrote the novel, and that was the question of how impenetrable most minds are unless we struggle to perceive them. Autism is a spectrum, a huge spectrum, and on one end of that spectrum, just a tiny degree away from pathology, is something we call ‘normal.’ ”

Latiolais will also be featured at Literary Orange 2009, to be held on April 4, 2009 at UCI. For further information on Literary Orange, please go to www.literaryorange.org or call 949.824.5300.