Amanda Filipacchi to Address Graduates at MCC’s 52nd Commencement Exercises

Manchester, Conn. (May 13, 2016) – Manhattan-based author Amanda Filipacchi will deliver the 52nd Commencement Address to Manchester Community College’s class of 2016. Commencement Exercises will be held on Thursday, May 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the Bicentennial Band Shell on the campus lawn.

Filipacchi (pronounced Fili-pah-kee) will also receive an associate degree in humane letters honoris causa.

She is the author of four novels, including The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty (W. W. Norton, 2015), of which The New York Times Book Review said, “Filipacchi’s book [has] a philosophical heft and prods us to examine our own prejudices…Funny, surreal, absurd, and charmingly preposterous…Filipacchi’s characters never question the weirdness around them but meet it with a delightful, practical ingenuity.” The New Yorker called the novel “smart and sweet…a tribute to the pleasures of friendship.”

Her other novels are Nude Men (Viking/Penguin 1993), Vapor (Carroll & Graf, 1999) and Love Creeps (St. Martin’s Press, 2005). Her fiction has been translated into 14 languages and has been anthologized in The Best American Humor 1994 (Simon & Schuster), Voices of the X-iled (Doubleday), and The Good Parts: The Best Erotic Writing in Modern Fiction (Berkley Books). Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.

Born in Paris, Filipacchi was educated in both France and the United States, and has lived in New York since she was 17 years old. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hamilton College and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Columbia University.