MARILYNNE ROBINSON, author of the novel "Gilead," which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, will present the 2009 Dwight H. Terry Lectures at Yale, beginning March 24.

The talks, free and open to the public, will be held on March 24, 26, 31, and April 2 at 4:30 p.m. in 102 Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street. A reception follows each lecture.

Ms. Robinson's theme is "Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self." The lectures, titled "On Human Nature," "The Strange History of Altruism," "The Freudian Self," and "Thinking Again," will explore the significance of reflection and the power of unvoiced thoughts in defining the self.

Ms. Robinson's most recent novel, "Home," was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Her first novel, "Housekeeping," won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award for First Fiction, as well as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the Academy of American Arts and Letters. Housekeeping was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Ms. Robinson, who teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award in 1990 and the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts in 1998. She is the author of two books of nonfiction, "Mother Country" and "The Death of Adam."

LECTURE SCHEDULE