Sunday, December 6 is the ninth annual Free Arts Day coordinated by ArtsWestchester. Free Arts Day, sponsored this year by Ronald McDonald House Charities and Target, gives participating organizations the opportunity to give back to their communities with a gift of art during this unforgettable day of free arts events. We are thrilled to announce that Cynthia Ozick, a resident of New Rochelle and one of our major living American writers, has generously agreed to read for us that day in the gallery of Pelham Art Center, our sister ArtsWestchester affiliate (and new writing workshop collaborator!) The reading will take place at 2:30 pm during the 1:30 - 3:30 opening reception for PAC’s annual artisan exhibition and sale, Home Sweet Home. The event is free and open to the general public.

Cynthia Ozick is acclaimed for her work in fiction and criticism. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for her novel, The Puttermesser Papers, which was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Fame & Folly, essays, was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and Heir for the Glimmering World, a novel, was shortlisted for the Man-Booker Award. She was a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; her essay collection, Quarrel & Quandary, won the 2001 award for criticism. Ozick’s work has been translated into languages worldwide. A dramatic sequel to her classic novella The Shawl was produced for the stage in New York, directed by Sidney Lumet. The Shawl was also selected for the National Endowment for the Arts nationwide Big Read program. In 2007 Ozick received the Presidential Medal for the Humanities.

Ms. Ozick was the first writer to be given the Rea Award for the Short Story. In making their selection, the jurors said: “A writer of great intelligence, moral energy, and imaginative power, Cynthia Ozick has appreciably widened the range of what the short story is able to be . . . Reading ‘The Shawl,’ we are moved past the truth of fact to a deeper, different understanding; we bear witness to the truth of art. Only rarely does this happen, and when it does, it must be celebrated.”

Ms. Ozick was born in Manhattan and has lived in the New York City area most of her life. She attended Hunter College High School, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from New York University with honors in English, and holds a master’s degree from Ohio State University. She is married to Bernard Hallote, a retired lawyer. Their daughter, Rachel Hallote, an archaeologist, is the director of the Jewish studies program at the State University of New York at Purchase.

Ms. Ozick will be introduced by author Roxana Robinson (Cost; A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories; Sweetwater) www.roxanarobinson.com

Pelham Art Center is located at 155 Fifth Avenue in Pelham, New York. For directions, go to www.pelhamartcenter.org. For more information about Free Arts Day, call ArtsWestchester at 914-428-4220 or go to www.artswestchester.org.

Free Arts Day 2009 is sponsored by

Programs and events of The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, the Orchard Foundation, the William Robinson Foundation, and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of Arts Westchester with funds from Westchester County Government.

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