Novelist Ron Hansen will read from his works on Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 pm in Room 126 (auditorium) at the John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts, as part of the UST Sacred Arts Festival.

Ron Hansen is the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University. His novels frequently pair history with morality tales as well as Catholic themes of unconditional love, redemption and resurrection.

His novels include The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (finalist for the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award), Mariette in Ecstasy (adapted for film and stage), and Exiles. Hanson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lyndhurst Foundation as well as the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 2007 Hansen was ordained a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church, and in May he was inducted to the College of Fellows at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, Calif.