Anne Fadiman, acclaimed author, essayist, and teacher, will receive an honorary degree from the College of the Holy Cross and address this year’s graduates during the College’s Commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 24 at 10:30 a.m. on the campus.

Fadiman is the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale University, a position she has held since 2005. Her first book, “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” (1997), was lauded by critics and received the National Book Critics Circle Award, among numerous other nonfiction honors. The book tells the story of an extended refugee family with a child with epilepsy, and their cultural, linguistic, and medical struggles in America. “Spirit” has been widely referenced by medical practitioners working to offer more effective care to patients from other cultures. Fadiman is also the author of two books of essays, “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader” (1998) and “At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays” (2007), and edited “Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love” (2005). Learn More