Rick Bass, an award-winning author and environmental activist, will read passages from his work at 8 p.m. on Thursday (March 4) in the Burton D. Morgan Center Lecture Hall. He will also speak about fiction, nonfiction and the environment at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, March 5, in the Barney-Davis Board Room. Bass is the third visiting writer in this semester's Beck Lecture Series.

Rick Bass

The author of 17 books, includingWhere the Sea Used to Be, The Ninemile Wolves: an Essayand the New York Times Notable story collectionThe Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, Bass's first short story collection,The Watch, won the 1988 PEN/Nelson Algren Award. He also has won the Pushcart Prize and the O'Henry award for his stories, some of which have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.

Nicknamed the "nature writer" by bookstores and critics alike, his books deal with "the nature of the human heart and the heart of nature" and Texas and the West. Bass's most recent work of fiction is the short story collectionThe Hermit's Story. He has also recently written many nonfiction works, includingColter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever HadandThe Roadless Yaak: Reflections and Observations About One of Our Last Great Wilderness Areas.

A recent article in theBloomsbury Reviewpraised Bass as being "characteristically southwestern in independence, his restlessness, his humor, his vitality, his sunny outlook, and his disclaim for affectation and pretense." Bass now lives and works in the Yaak Valley in Montana.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

For press inquiries:

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