Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information Office
                                           publicinfo@selu.edu
                                           SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
    Date: 11/3/98
      Contact:                           Christina Chapple   5

SLU, HAMMOND TO WELCOME FAMED MEXICAN AUTHOR MONDAY
     HAMMOND -- Southeastern Louisiana University will welcome Mexican novelist
Carlos Fuentes, celebrated around the world as a leading literary figure and diplomat, to campus
Monday (Nov. 9).
     Fuentes is coming to Southeastern to present a free lecture at 10 a.m. at the Southeastern
University Center. He will follow his talk on "The Creative Spirit as a Force for Humanism" with
a book signing in University Center's St. Tammany Room at 11:30 a.m. 
     President Sally Clausen and Hammond City Administrator Don Holtgren, representing
Mayor Louis Tallo, will greet Fuentes in a special ceremony at the Alumni Center before his
lecture. He also will be feted at a post-lecture luncheon at the Alumni Center and plans to visit
with members of Southeastern's foreign languages faculty before leaving campus Monday
afternoon.
     Margaret Marshall, head of Southeastern's foreign languages and literatures department,
said Fuentes' visit to Southeastern is his first to a university in the South. His lecture is
sponsored by Southeastern's College of Arts and Sciences and foreign languages and literatures
department, the General Consulate of Mexico and the Mexican Cultural Center of the South.
     The author will be accompanied by his wife, French journalist Silvia Lemus, and
members of the Consular Corps of New Orleans, including his personal friend, Mexican
Ambassador Agustin Garcia-Lopez. 
     Fuentes has won many of the world's most prestigious international awards, including
Mexico's National Prize for Literature, Spain's Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Venezuela's Romulo
Gallegos Award, France's Legion of Honor and Brazil's Order of the Southern Cross. He was the
first by a Mexican author to become a best-seller in the United States with his novel "The Old 
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Gringo," which was made into a motion picture, starring Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck.
     Fuentes also gained fame in America for his 1992 Discovery Channel series,  "The
Buried Mirror," which presented a comprehensive history of the Hispanic world on both sides of
the Atlantic and detailed the economic, political and cultural changes facing the United State's
Hispanic population.
     Renowned also as a diplomat and human rights activist, Fuentes has served as Mexico's
Ambassador to France and was an active participant in peace efforts in Central America.
     His most recent works include "The Crystal Frontier" (1997), "A New Time for Mexico"
(1996) and "Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone" (1995).
                              -SLU-