Mark Helprin to Deliver 2011 Commencement Address at Hillsdale College

HILLSDALE, Mich., May 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Mark Helprin will deliver the 2011 commencement address and receive a Doctorate of Humane Letters at Hillsdale College on May 14.

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Mr. Helprin was born in 1947 and raised in the British West Indies. He attended Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Following earning his degrees from Harvard, Mr. Helprin did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford, Princeton, and Columbia. Mr. Helprin also served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli Infantry, and the Israeli Air Force.

Known as one of our time's most prominent writers, Mr. Helprin was published in The New Yorker for almost a quarter of a century. In addition, his stories and essays on politics and aesthetics appear in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The New York Times, The National Review, American Heritage, Forbes ASAP, and many other publications both in the United States and abroad.

Mr. Helprin is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as former Guggenheim Fellow and Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute. At Hillsdale College he has given public lectures and taught courses on creative writing as the Aaron and Helen L. DeRoy Visiting Fellow.

His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and include A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, Ellis Island and Other Stories, Winter's Tale, Swan Lake, A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, A City in Winter, The Veil of Snows, The Pacific and Other Stories, Freddy and Fredericka and the non- fiction work Digital Barbarism. For his works he has been awarded the National Jewish Book Award, the Prix de Rome, and the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, among other prizes.

He resides outside Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife, Lisa.

Speaking on behalf of graduating seniors, class president Jonathan Gregg praised Mr. Helprin's work: "His writings identify both the struggles that we, as graduating seniors, will have in the world around us and the way to overcome those struggles. His ability to see truth, express beauty, and inspire goodness fits with the principles of Hillsdale College."

"We are very pleased that Mr. Helprin has accepted our invitation to deliver this year's commencement address. His remarks on this important day will be a fitting tribute to our graduating seniors," said Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn.

Hillsdale College was founded in south central Michigan in 1844 and is nationally known for its maintenance of a classical core curriculum and for its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies. It also conducts a large outreach effort that promotes civil and religious liberty, including a monthly speech digest, Imprimis, with a current circulation of over 1.9 million.

SOURCE Hillsdale College