New York Times best selling author Gwyn Hyman Rubio to appear at Union College

New York Times best selling novelist and featured author in Oprah’s book club, Gwyn Hyman Rubio, will read from selected works at Union College. She will appear on Tuesday, April 4, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. in the Upper Conference Room of the Patridge Campus Center on campus.

Rubio appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” as a featured novelist in Oprah’s Book Club collection. Soon after, Icy Sparks became a New York Times bestseller. Ice Sparks chronicles the life of a young girl growing up in Appalachia. Rubio’s latest work, The Woodsman’s Daughter, a historical novel set in the late nineteenth century was released, was recently named by Louisville’s Courier Journal as one of the top ten best books of the year

Gwyn’s collection of short stories, Sharing Power, was nominated for a Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award. Her short fiction has been published and anthologized around the country. Her short story Little Saint received the Cecil Hackney Literary Award for first prize in the National Short Story Competition and later appeared in Prairie Schooner. She has received grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. In July, 1998, her first novel was published by Viking/Penguin. Highlighted in Time Magazine by Barnes & Noble, Icy Sparks was one of several novels chosen to represent “The Next Wave of Great Literary Voices” in the Discover Great New Writers program.

Born in Macon, GA, Rubio grew up in the small, southern town of Cordele. Upon graduating from Florida State University with a Bachelor’s in English, Gwyn joined the Peace Corps where she met her husband of 30 years, Angel Rubio. The daughter of a bestselling author Mac Hyman, Gwyn Hyman Rubio decided to devote herself completely to writing in 1983. She and her husband have lived in Kentucky for over 20 years, having spent most of that time in Berea. Today they reside in Versailles, KY.