Athens, Ga. – National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez will speak on “The Writer and Social Responsibility” at The Georgia Review‘s third annual Earth Day celebration, beginning at 7 p.m. on April 19, in the Visitor Center and Conservatory of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.
Lopez will read both nonfiction and fiction, and his books will be available for purchase both beforehand and during the reception following the program. Music for the reception will be provided by Hawk Proof Rooster. Tickets are $8 for the general public and $4 for students; seating is limited, so advance purchase is strongly recommended. For ticket information and purchase, call The Georgia Review office at 706/542-3481 or see www.uga.edu/garev.
The Georgia Review, now in its 65th year of continuous publication at the University of Georgia, has an ongoing commitment to including important new writings on environmental matters in its quarterly mix of essays, short stories, poems and reviews. To honor its Spring 2009 issue, which included a special feature on “Culture and the Environment,” the Review organized an Earth Day reading by Athens’ own Coleman Barks and poet Alice Friman. Deciding to make this reading an annual affair, the Review hosted UGA’s Judith Ortiz Cofer and South Carolina fiction writer George Singleton last year. Barry Lopez,who is internationally known for his writings on important social issues, is a natural for this series, said Stephen Corey, editor of The Georgia Review.
Lopez has been called the nation’s “premier nature writer” by the San Francisco Chronicle, but in fact his work addresses a wide range of environmental and humanitarian concerns.As he has told public television’s Bill Moyers, “I’m not writing about nature. I’m writing about humanity. And if I have a subject, it is justice. And the rediscovery of the manifold way in which our lives can be shaped by the recovery of a sense of reverence for life.”
Lopez was a National Book Award finalist for Of Wolves and Men (1978), then won this award for Arctic Dreams (1986). His numerous other books include several award-winning works of fiction-among them Field Notes (1994), Winter Count (1981), and a novella-length fable, Crow and Weasel (1990). In 2004 Lopez published Resistance, a book of interrelated stories written in response to recent ideological changes in American society and the subject of a Spring 2006 Georgia Review interview. He also is the co-editor with Debra Gwartney of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape (2006), a work of language, geography, and folklore.His books, along with his magazine work, reflect a life of travel and cultural inquiry that has taken him to nearly seventy countries.
Lopez’s honors include the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the John Hay Medal; Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundation fellowships; and Pushcart prizes in fiction and nonfiction. His distinctive essays and stories have graced eight issues of The Georgia Review since 1993-most recently “A Dark Light in the West: Racism and Reconciliation” (Fall 2010), an essay that gives-in typical Lopez fashion-sustained attention to complex ethical problems in social, environmental and political systems.
Once a landscape photographer, Barry Lopez maintains close contact with a diverse community of artists. He serves on the advisory board of Theater Grottesco in Santa Fe. Additionally, he has collaborated with composer John Luther Adams on several concert and theater productions and has spoken at openings for sculptor Michael Singer and photographer Robert Adams. In another arena of work, he recently teamed with biologist E. O. Wilson to design a curriculum that combines the sciences and humanities in a new undergraduate major at Texas Tech University.
Vital support for Barry Lopez’s appearance is being provided by the State Botanical Garden, the UGA President’s Venture Fund, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the UGA English department, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, UGA’s Office of International Education, the UGA Press, Big City Bread Café, Terrapin Brewery, and Hawk Proof Rooster.
