On Monday, Nov. 18, the Fletcher Committee will hold their annual chef’s benefit where patrons will be able to feast upon Chef Terrell Brunet’s gourmet meals, fine wines and appetizers while also making it possible to raise enough funds for the committee’s spring lecture featuring Dr. Maxine Hong Kingston.
“It has been nearly two decades of bringing to Nicholls and the community some of the greatest poets, novelists and scholars of American literature at no cost to the university, students or public,” David Middleton, distinguished service professor of languages and literature and chair of the Fletcher Lecture Series, said.
“It is funded simply through the generous support of those who attend the benefit and offer donations.”
This year’s chef, Terrel Brunet, is a Louisiana native with over fifteen years of experience cooking and teaching around the globe. He is a graduate of Mandeville High School and has instructed professionals in cooking contemporary American cuisine in New Orleans, New York, San Francisco and Japan. Brunet has also been a certified culinary educator who taught courses on French and American cuisines at the Culinary Institute of America for four years.
“We are looking forward to experiencing a chef who is very knowledgeable and comfortable with the surroundings,” Timothy Lindsley, assistant professor of languages and literature and chair of the fall Fletcher Lecture Committee, said.
The literary and culinary theme of this year’s benefit is based upon Francis Parkinson Keyes’s Dinner at Antoine’s which is set in New Orleans in the late 1940s. The menu will include: pomme souffl, oysters foche, trout/pompano en Ponchartrain, filet marchand du vin and baked Alaska.
The ticket price is $50 per person and has remained the same price since the first Fletcher Chef’s Benefit in 1984. Up to two hundred tickets will be sold.
“You’re getting a New Orleans quality gourmet meal for probably half the price that it would cost if you would go down there and eat it,” Middleton said.
The chef does not get paid but gives a true donation of his time, labor, money and materials to the benefit.
The committee’s saying is, “in the fall you have food for thought, and in the spring you have an intellectual feast.”
This year’s speaker at the lecture will be Maxine Hong Kingston, a very noted Chinese American writer who teaches at the University of California at Berkley and occasionally at the University of Hawaii.
“Her books have helped change the way Americans think about multicultural/multiethnic experiences,” Virginia MacDonald, assistant professor of languages and literature, said.
“Kingston is interested in the immigrant experiences in this area and what she learns here may form the basis of a future book of hers.”
The lecture will be April 28 at Nicholls. In the morning, Kingston will speak to an interested group of students and local community members about her writing strategy and techniques. In the evening, she will give a formal lecture, which is the Fletcher Lecture.
Next semester, Nicholls English 101 classes will be reading China Men, and English 102 classes will be reading Warrior Woman, both written by Kingston, in preparation of her visit.
The Fletcher Lecture series is a tax-free private foundation that was founded in honor of Marie Fletcher, who taught English at Nicholls from the late 1940s until her death in 1983. Fletcher was a member of the faculty of Nicholls Junior College and taught at Nicholls through its transition from a junior college to a state university.
In the 1970s, she was head of the Department of English and retired in 1980 as a professor emeritus. However, she continued to teach part-time until her death.
In 1983, a committee was formed of English department faculty members who were former students of hers.
“Rather than setting up a scholarship in her name, they set an even higher goal and decided to set up a lectureship in her honor,” Middleton said.
Since American literature was Fletcher’s specialty, each year a nationally or internationally known American writer or scholar is brought to speak at Nicholls. The first lecturer was Robert Penn Warren in 1985, author of All the King’s Men and the only American writer to win the Pultizer Prize for both poetry and fiction.
When the first committee met, there was no money to pay the lecturer an honorarium. The committee had to come up with a creative and effective way to raise money on their own. They then made the decision to invite a well-known chef to the campus and give a chef’s benefit.
“There are many chef’s benefits now, such as the A+ Scholar and the December benefit for the Jubilee Arts and Humanities, but we were the first in 1984,” Middleton said.
“It’s been successful for us and successful for other causes. I think that speaks well of the Nicholls community and people off-campus who have supported us and other worthy causes through benefits as well.”
The Fletcher Lecture Committee is made up of sixteen members who are all Nicholls professors. One member is a librarian and the other fifteen are in the department of languages and literature. They are divided into the fall committee, which organizes the chef’s benefit, and the spring committee, which organizes the lecture.
“Through the generosity of our patrons and hard work of our committee members, we are able to provide something here to serve the Nicholls community and general public that to find something equivalent you might well have to go to a large university in a large city,” Middleton said.
“In nearly twenty years, we have built this up into what is now a nationally recognized lectureship in American literature.”