UALR is delighted that Norris Church Mailer is including our campus as a stop on her upcoming tour with the release of her latest book, A Ticket to the Circus.

Mailer, a native Arkansan who was married to Norman Mailer for the last 30 years of his life, will be on campus April 13 for a 6 p.m. lecture in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall followed by a signing. If you don’t know Norris, meeting her will be lots of fun. She was born Barbara Davis in the small town of Atkins. She fell for Norman when he was in town at a friend’s party. She was a 26-year-old recently divorced art teacher in Russellville; he was 52.

She followed him to New York where she became a model, actress, painter, and writer. In the 1970s, she dated a little-known, aspiring politician named Bill Clinton. Married to Mailer, she faced down ex-wives and lovers by the dozen, according to her publicist at Random House who offered these details about her latest of three books:

“From age three when she was crowned Little Miss Little Rock, Norris Church Mailer has gone from one wild adventure to the next, and she shares it all in her frank, beautifully written, deeply personal memoir A TICKET TO THE CIRCUS (Random House; On sale April 6, 2010). Reading her stories is like sitting down to laugh and cry with an old friend: Norris holds nothing back, from showing up to dinner with Oscar de la Renta wearing only a nightgown, to serving coleslaw to Bob Dylan; from the heartbreak of first discovering her husband’s affairs, to saying goodbye to Norman on his deathbed.

“In a winning narrative voice that evokes her native Arkansas, Norris recounts herlife as a bright, talented girl who knew her life would one day be as surprising and memorable as a day at the circus. With clear eyes and startling frankness, she depicts the full evolution of her marriage to Norman Mailer, from the white-hot beginning through the very rocky patches to the mournful ending, offering an incredibly intimate perspective on this legendary man of letters. A TICKET TO THE CIRCUS is an intelligent, bittersweet memoir that will enchant readers with its charm and insight into how we grow up and how we love.”

Author Joyce Carol Oates comments: “A Ticket to the Circus is a remarkable memoir—blunt, funny, extraordinarily candid and self-aware; deeply moving, as it is wonderfully entertaining; above all, a memorable double portrait of two very unusual people, a couple for whom the term meant for each other is wholly appropriate.”

Hope you can join us for the lecture! Books will be available at the signing. The UALR departments of English and Rhetoric and Writing are sponsors of the event.