St. Lawrence University: Commencement

Marie “Lorrie” Moore
Doctor of Literature

The novels, essays and short stories of Marie “Lorrie” Moore, St. Lawrence Class of 1978, are perhaps, like life itself, filled with contradictions. She blends, as one reviewer wrote, boldness with poignancy, nouns and adjectives that never matched before, colorful detail and meaningful blur. She offers unassuming skill, wry humor, a bizarre sense of reality that unfailingly expresses her understanding of humanity. Publisher’s Weekly describes her writing as “innovative and emotionally complex, prose that shows lyric grace and poetic agility.”

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of St. Lawrence, where she wrote a short story that won first prize in a contest sponsored by Seventeen magazine and thus launched her career, Moore earned her M.F.A. from Cornell University. Her master’s thesis became her first book, Self-Help, and her subsequent work has included two novels, two fiction collections, a children’s book, and short stories, reviews and essays in such periodicals as the New York Times Book Review, Cosmopolitan, and Ms. Magazine. She has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, among much recognition of her work.

Since 1984, Lorrie Moore has taught at the University of Wisconsin, where she now holds the Delmore Schwartz Professorship in the Humanities. For her contributions to contemporary literary excellence, St. Lawrence welcomes to campus Marie “Lorrie” Moore and invites her to accept its highest honor, the degree Doctor of Literature, honoris causa.

Return to Commencement	Marie “Lorrie” Moore Doctor of Literature The novels, essays and short stories of Marie “Lorrie” Moore, St. Lawrence Class of 1978, are perhaps, like life itself, filled with contradictions. She blends, as one reviewer wrote, boldness with poignancy, nouns and adjectives that never matched before, colorful detail and meaningful blur. She offers unassuming skill, wry humor, a bizarre sense of reality that unfailingly expresses her understanding of humanity. Publisher’s Weekly describes her writing as “innovative and emotionally complex, prose that shows lyric grace and poetic agility.” A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of St. Lawrence, where she wrote a short story that won first prize in a contest sponsored by Seventeen magazine and thus launched her career, Moore earned her M.F.A. from Cornell University. Her master’s thesis became her first book, Self-Help, and her subsequent work has included two novels, two fiction collections, a children’s book, and short stories, reviews and essays in such periodicals as the New York Times Book Review, Cosmopolitan, and Ms. Magazine. She has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, among much recognition of her work. Since 1984, Lorrie Moore has taught at the University of Wisconsin, where she now holds the Delmore Schwartz Professorship in the Humanities. For her contributions to contemporary literary excellence, St. Lawrence welcomes to campus Marie “Lorrie” Moore and invites her to accept its highest honor, the degree Doctor of Literature, honoris causa.
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