The Book and Author Dinner, an annual fundraiser that benefits the university’s Eudora Welty Chair and the John Clayton Fant Memorial Library, is part of Welty Weekend at The W, Oct. 16-18.

Held in honor of beloved alumna Eudora Welty, the weekend also will include the 15th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium that will open on the evening of Thursday, Oct. 16 in Poindexter Auditorium and the Andrea Godwin Overby Forum on Friday, Oct. 17 at noon in the Hogarth Banquet Room and a release party for the alumni-sponsored cookbook “Southern Grace, Recipes and Remembrances from The W” on Oct. 17 from 4-6 p.m. in the President’s Home.

Born in Chicago, Mitchard earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1973 from Rockford College. She taught high school English before beginning her professional writing career in 1976 with the Pioneer Press in Chicago. She later worked for the Capital Times in Madison, Wis., and then The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Her first husband died of cancer in 1993. With five children and less than one dollar in the bank, she followed her dream by attending a writer’s camp where she began her first novel, “The Deep End of the Ocean.”

“The Deep End of the Ocean,” which became a New York Times bestseller, was the first book chosen for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club in September 1996 and was made into a movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams.

She also has written “Twelve Times Blessed,” “A Theory of Relativity,” “The Most Wanted,” “Mother Less Child” and “The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship,” a collection of her newspaper columns which are syndicated nationwide by Tribune Media Services.

Her awards include an Audie Award, the Headliner Award, the Maggie Award for Journalism and the 1997 Anne Powers Award for fiction from the Council of Wisconsin Writers. She also earned three Ragdale residencies and was selected as one of the Ladies’ Home Journal Most Fascinating Women in 1996.

The mother of six, she and her husband live in Madison, Wis.

The Book and Author Dinner is a black tie-optional event. Tickets are $100 per person. Patron tickets are $1,000 for two people and include preferred seating and an invitation to a private reception at the President’s Home following the event. Limited seating also is available in the balcony for free.