The Lives of Rocks: Field Notes on Finding Home

Rick Bass

Sunday, 31 Jan 2010 at 7:00 pm – Sun Room/South Ballroom, Memorial Union

Author and environmentalist Rick Bass is the author of twenty books, including the autobiographical Why I Came West and the short story collection The Lives of Rocks. His first short story collection, The Watch, set in Texas, won the PEN/Nelson Algren Award; and his 2002 collection, The Hermit's Story, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and an O. Henry Award, Bass started writing short stories during his lunch breaks while working as a gas and oil geologist in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1987 he moved to the Yaak Valley in the northern Rockies, where he has been active in protecting the land from roads and logging and serves on the board of the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies. Part of the Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination Symposium.

No audio recording available for download or podcast.
Rick Bass's other works include The Deer Pasture, Oil Notes, Wild to the Heart, Winter: Notes from Montana, The Ninemile Wolves, The Lost Grizzlies, The Book of Yaak, Where the Sea Used to Be, Fiber and Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had.

RELATED EVENT
Meaningful Work: The Writer as Citizen - Terry Tempest Williams and Rick Bass
Saturday, January 30, 2010
3:30 PM, Sun Room, Memorial Union

Join symposium keynotes Terry Tempest Williams and Rick Bass in a conversation about the responsibility of writers in an ever-changing and imperiled environmental landscape. Terry Tempest Williams is a conservationist, advocate for free speech, and author of Refuge. Her most recent book is Finding Beauty in a Broken World. Rick Bass is the author of twenty books, including the autobiographical Why I Came West and the short story collection The Lives of Rocks. He lives in the Yaak Valley in the northern Rockies, where he has been active in protecting the land from roads and logging. The discussion will be moderated by Dean Bakopoulos, an assistant professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment.

View the complete schedule of symposium events:
Things Fall Apart: Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Cosponsored By:
  • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • Humanities Iowa
  • MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment
  • Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)

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