Brian Daldorph presents Real Characters: The Writing Lifestyle Depicted in Old School on Wednesday, April 8, at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.

The high school students in Old School are fascinated by their favorite authors and seek to emulate them – with one boy going so far as to retype Ernest Hemingway’s books. This presentation examines the cultural myths surrounding the lifestyle of famous authors and compares these myths to the real lives of the writers featured in Old School: Hemingway, Ayn Rand, and Robert Frost. This deconstruction of the romantic view of writers will also seek to answer the question: why do writers write?

Daldorph teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Kansas.