Writer Julia Alvarez to speak at Middlebury commencement

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (AP) - Writer and National Medal of the Arts recipient Julia Alvarez is delivering Middlebury College’s commencement address.

Alvarez - author of “In the Time of the Butterflies” and “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” - was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 2013, the nation’s highest award given to artists and their patrons.

Alvarez, a Middlebury writer-in-residence, will receive a doctor of letters degree at the ceremony on Sunday.

Honorary degrees will also go to Martin Chalfie, a Columbia University professor who received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Hilary Hahn, a Grammy Award-winning violinist; Christina Johnston, principal of the Weybridge Elementary School; and Eric Nelson, a political theorist and government professor at Harvard University.