Black Mountain Institute (BMI) Executive Director Carol C. Harter announced that BMI Associate Director, professor of English and acclaimed author Richard Wiley will hold a reading and discussion of his latest novel, "Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show" on Wednesday, March 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Barrick Museum Auditorium on the UNLV campus. This special event is presented by the Black Mountain Institute and the University Forum Lecture series at UNLV. The event is free and open to the public.

A sword-swinging story set against the historic opening of Japan to the West, "Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show" is a prequel to Wiley's PEN/Faulkner award-winning work, "Soldiers in Hiding." In a recent starred review, Publisher's Weekly stated: "This absorbing and immensely pleasurable book achieves momentum through Wiley's fluid style, the lightness with which he bears his learning, and the vitality and wit with which he brings a vanished world to life."

Wiley is the author of five novels, including "Fools' Gold," "Festival for Three Thousand Maidens" and "Indigo." "Soldiers in Hiding" won the Washington State Governors Award as well as the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Best

American Fiction in 1987, and "Ahmed's Revenge" received the Maria Thomas Fiction Award from the Peace Corps Writers society in 1999. Wiley is a member of the Nevada Writers Hall of fame in recognition of his lifetime achievement.

Richard Wiley has led a uniquely international life. Born in Fresno, California, and raised in Tacoma, Washington, he graduated from the University of Puget Sound and obtained a Master of Arts degree at Sophia University in Tokyo. He later studied in the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop and received a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing-fiction from the University of Iowa. From 1967-69, he served in Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer. From 1976-1982, he was the bilingual coordinator for the Tacoma Public Schools and later the executive director of the Association of International Schools in Nairobi, Kenya. He has also lived in Japan and Nigeria.

Wiley has been a professor of creative writing at UNLV since 1989, and in 2006 became the Associate Director of the Black Mountain Institute, an international center for global discourse on today's most pressing issues. UNLV President Emerita Carol C. Harter leads the institute, which provides an environment where thinkers and writers from all segments of global society can fight against entrenched perspectives, whatever their political or cultural source.

For more information, please contact the Black Mountain Institute at 702-895-5542, or via email at: queries@blackmountaininstitute.org.