Please join us for the second event in the Fall 2016 Hallie Ford Literary Series at Willamette: a reading and discussion of contemporary issues in environmental movements by acclaimed science and nature writer Gary Ferguson on Wednesday, October 12. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room of Willamette’s library and is free and open to the public. Books will be available courtesy of the Willamette Store. This event is sponsored by the Learning by Creating Program and the Green Fund.

Author of 22 books on science and nature, including the award-winning Hawk’s Rest, published by National Geographic Adventure Press, Gary Ferguson serves as a keynote presenter at conservation and outdoor education gatherings around the country. Over the past twenty five years Gary has traveled thousands of miles down the rivers, trails, and back roads of North America: trekking 500 miles through Yellowstone to write Walking Down the Wild (Simon & Schuster), wandering through the seasons with the first 14 wolves released into Yellowstone National Park for The Yellowstone Wolves: The First Year (Globe Pequot), spending a season in the field at a wilderness therapy program for the best-selling Shouting at the Sky (St. Martin’s Press). His most recent book, The Carry Home, is both a moving celebration of the outdoor life shared between Gary and his wife Jane, who died tragically in a canoeing accident in northern Ontario in 2005, and a chronicle of grief and the healing power of wilderness.

Gary will be joined by his partner Dr. Mary Clare, an internationally-known scholar whose work in social and cultural psychology and community health initiatives has recently involved environmental justice work with the National Parks and wilderness-based programs for returning veterans. Together they will discuss the shortfalls of modern environmentalism in the twentieth century and new opportunities to bridge environmental and social justice movements.

Listen to an interview with Gary on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud here: http://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/gary-ferguson-talks-about-the-carry-home/

For more information, contact:
Scott Nadelson, Hallie Ford Chair in Writing
Willamette University
snadelso@willamette.edu
503-370-6290

Poet, musician, and filmmaker Trevino L. Brings Plenty will open the 2016 Hallie Ford Literary Series on Thursday, September 15 at 7:30 p.m. He is the author of two full-length volumes of poetry, Wakpá Wanáği, Ghost River and Real Indian Junk Jewelry. His work has also been included in the collection Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets. A Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, Trevino explores in a variety of media American Indian identity and urban Indian life. He is a singer/songwriter and guitarist with the ensemble Ballads of Larry Drake, and he has read and performed his poetry from Portland, Oregon, to Amman, Jordan. About Trevino’s most recent book, the poet and novelist Sherman Alexie writes, “These poems are ‘porcupine quills,’ beautiful and sharp. They draw blood. They make me laugh and cry. I love this book.”

The event is free and open to the public. Books will be for sale, courtesy of the Willamette Store.

For more information, contact:
Scott Nadelson, Hallie Ford Chair in Writing
Willamette University
snadelso@willamette.edu
503-370-6290

Please join us for a special event in the Spring 2016 Hallie Ford Literary Series at Willamette, in collaboration with the Department of Theatre: a staged reading of Successful Strategies, a new play by Andrea Stolowitz, twice winner of the Oregon Book Award for drama.

Produced by Theatre 33 and directed by Elisabeth Rothan, the reading will take place on Tuesday, March 15, at 7 p.m. in the Hatfield Room of Willamette’s library. It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a Q&A with the author.

Successful Strategies is a comedy inspired by the Marivaux play of the same name. The original play deals with the handlings, schemes, and strategies around trying to make love stay in 1733 Burgundy, France, the ancestral home of the Pinot Noir grape. Andrea’s play examines the same questions, but it takes place now, in Oregon, the North American home of Pinot Noir. It’s play about love, grape growing, and wine making in all of their individual and exquisite pains.

Andrea Stolowitz has been Willamette’s resident playwright since 2008, teaching classes in the Departments of English and Theatre. Her plays have been presented and developed at The Cherry Lane (NYC), The Old Globe (SD), The Long Wharf (CT), New York Stage and Film (NY), and Portland Center Stage (OR). The LA Times calls her work “heartbreaking” and the Orange County Register characterizes her approach as a “brave refusal to sugarcoat…issues and tough decisions.” A recipient of Artists Repertory Theater’s $25,000 New Play Commission, Andrea’s latest work Ithaka premiered at the theater in 2013 to critical acclaim. It had its mid-west premiere in 2014 in Chicago’s InFusion Theater. Her play Antarktikos world-premiered at The Pittsburgh Playhouse in March 2013 and was workshopped nationwide at The New Harmony Project (IN), Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival, and at Seattle Repertory Theater. She also teaches playwriting and screenwriting at the University of Portland.

Listen to Andrea discussing Ithaka on OPB’s Think Out Loud here: http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/segment/ithaka-examines-life-returning-veterans/.

Scott Nadelson