SUNY Oswego professor and renowned novelist Robert “Bob” O’Connor is the next speaker in the Living Writers Series, with a virtual discussion at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 15.

“When there is peace, the war-like man attacks himself.” -- This Nietzsche epigraph prefaces the critically acclaimed novel "Buffalo Soldiers" by O’Connor, published by Alfred A. Knopf, released in paperback by Vintage Contemporaries and later turned into a feature film.

The book is a grimly humorous take on America’s late-1990s peacetime army. At the time of its release, the destruction and mayhem of the protagonist’s experience read as a metaphor for America, a country many saw as ripping itself apart at its seams with drugs, violence and racial division. In some ways, organizers said, that makes his Nov. 15 appearance just as timely.

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, the creative writing professor who collaborated with the Oswego Reading Initiative, the History Department and ARTSwego to organize the series, noted that another epigraph actually precedes the Nietzsche quote: “Bob’s novel opens with a few lines made famous by someone he shares a name with.” She referenced Bob Marley’s eponymous song, "Buffalo Soldier": “If you know your history / then you would know where you’re coming from,” and added that O’Connor’s writing holds a mirror up, helping one see their own context in America’s history more clearly.

O’Connor’s wry, incisive humor and laid-back personality have made him popular with SUNY Oswego’s close-knit campus community, and Frazier also pointed out a few facts from his own personal history: “Bob walked the stage right here at SUNY Oswego, then earned his graduate degree at Syracuse University, where he studied under literary legends Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. Even before his book was adapted as a 2003 film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Anna Paquin, Ed Harris and Scott Glenn, Granta magazine named him one of ‘The Best of Young American Writers.’" 

Following O’Connor’s appearance, the Living Writers Series will close out its fall series with a final event: a talk with writer/director Josh Aaseng, whose debut documentary, "Manifest Destiny Jesus," was co-produced and directed with T. Geronimo Johnson and Daemond Arrindell and screened internationally. The film was the winner of the Audience Choice Award at the DC Black Film Festival. 

For more information, visit the SUNY Oswego events calendar and search for "Living Writers Series."

-- Submitted by the Living Writers Series