Author of 'Ghosts Dance' to speak at U.

Friends of the Marriott Library are sponsoring a Sunday Afternoon Books and Authors Lecture featuring David Kranes, author of "Making the Ghosts Dance," at 3 p.m. on Nov. 12, in the Little Theater, A. Ray Olpin Union Building at the University of Utah.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking is available east of the Union, where the event will be held. For more information, call 581-3421.

Objects easily appear and disappear in Peck's hands, and so do people. "Into the void," the young magician writes on a sheet of paper. "What's supposed to happen doesn't" and "What's not supposed to happen does." That's all the sense he can make of life, and the uncertainty produces hilarious results. The "theory of failed expectations" — if you can't control the outcome, then roll with it. And roll he does, all the way to Puerto Villarta, Corfu, and Paris — letting life come to him rather than searching for the "divination of secrets." In the end, he finds both.

For the past four decades, Kranes has been one of the most influential and sustained forces for writing and fostering writers in Utah. Throughout his career he has been a prolific writer, producing stories, plays, novels, screenplays, and lectures. His plays have been performed in New York and across the United States at notable regional theaters. He is the author of 50 plays and seven novels. His fiction works include: "Margins" (1972); "Criminals" (1981); "The Hunting Years" (1984); "Keno Runner" (1989); "Low Tide in the Desert" (1996); and "The National Tree" (2001). His latest novel, "Making the Ghosts Dance" was published this year by Signature Books.

Kranes, emeritus professor of English at the University of Utah, came to the university in 1967 after graduating from Yale Drama School. For 14 years he served as the artistic director of the Sundance Institute's Playwrights Lab — a developmental laboratory which sent more than 30 plays to New York and other regional theaters. During his teaching career, he received every teaching award offered by the University of Utah including the prestigious University Professor Award and the Ramona Cannon Teaching Award.