Paul Simon to Lecture at Emory

Legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon will be the featured speaker at an lecture series in February 2013.

Simon is known for his lyrical genius and folk-rock collaboration with Art Garfunkel to form the band Simon and Garfunkel in the 1960s.

He will give the 2013 Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature, a series of lectures that are free and open to the public.

Simon, 70, will talk about historical antecedents of the music made between 1966 and 1970, according to statement released by the university on Thursday.

The folk-rock legend is the winner of 12 Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Simon and Garfunkel and as a solo artist.

No. 1 songs written by Simon include “The Sound of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Previous speakers at the lecture series include Nobel Prize laureates Seamus Heaney (1988) and Mario Vargas Llosa (2006), Salman Rushdie (2004), Umberto Eco (2008) and Margaret Atwood (2010).

Joseph Skibell, associate professor of English and creative writing at Emory and director of the lectures, said selecting Simon to speak aims to "slightly open up the concept of what literature is.”