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Lectures Program Event Being Planned
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Speaker to be announced.

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Mike Perry
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Michael Perry is a humorist and author of the bestselling memoirs Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time and Truck: A Love Story; and his latest, Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and a baby due any minute, Perry shares stories from his new life in the country. Perry is the author of the essay collection Off Main Street; has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, Backpacker, Orion, and Salon.com; and is a contributing editor to Men's Health. He is also a singer/songwriter and has released two cds of original folk country music with his band, The Long Beds. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination.

Gnawed Bones: A Poetry Reading - Peggy Shumaker
4:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Peggy Shumaker is the Alaska State Writer Laureate. Her new book of poems, Gnawed Bones, is a meditation on mortality and the natural world. Schumaker's many other books include the lyrical memoir, Just Breathe Normally, and six collections of poetry. Her nonfiction has appeared in anthologies like Under Northern Lights and A Year in Place as well as Prairie Schooner and Ascent. Shumaker is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, was poet in residence at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell, and served as president of the Associated Writing Programs board of directors. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, she currently teaches in the low-residency Rainier Writing Workshop. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination.

FLYWAY Magazine's Home Voices - Author Readings
2:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Three writers in the Iowa State MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment will read from their creative work: Melissa Lamberton, "Tracing the Creek Home"; Nate Pillman, "Fern Canyon"; and Rebekah Beall, "Parkophilia." The participants were selected from a competitive pool of submissions by the staff of Flyway, a journal of writing and environment, in which the readers' work will also be published. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination.

Forty-three countries, Five Continents: Writing on Place and the Travels Between - Pam Houston
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Pam Houston is the author of two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness, winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award, and Waltzing the Cat, which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. Houston's other works include the collection of essays, A Little More About Me, and the novel Sighthound. Houston is the Director of Creative Writing at the University of California Davis. She has contributed literary essays for CBS Sunday Morning and has been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination.

Authors on the Craft of Writing: A Rough Guide to the Mind and Heart - A Panel Discussion
4:00 PM – Campanile Room, Memorial Union - Join us for a conversation with three authors who write from the trenches of experience, who treat landscape as a character and whose work wrestles with the mind and heart. Participants include the symposium keynotes. Pam Houston is the author of the collection of essays A Little More About Me and the award-winning Cowboys Are My Weakness. She is the director of creative writing at the University of California Davis. Peggy Shumaker is the Alaska State Writer Laureate. Her work includes the memoir Just Breathe Normally and six collections of poetry, including her latest, Gnawed Bones. Michael Perry is a humorist and author of the bestselling memoirs Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time and the newly released Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. He is also a contributing editor to Men's Health. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination.

A Rough Guide to Publishing: An Agents and Editors Panel
2:00 PM – Campanile Room, Memorial Union - This panel of agents and editors will provide a frank, instructive discussion, followed by a Q & A with the audience, about the publishing industry. The panel consists of three publishing insiders and one author: Jennifer Sahn, editor at Orion, an award-winning environmental magazine; Katherine Fausset, literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd., one of the oldest and most prestigious agencies in the world; Patrick Thomas, editor at Milkweed Editions, a Minneapolis-based book publisher; and Debra Marquart, associate professor of English at Iowa State and author of several books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination. A reception to welcome the visiting writers and artists participating in the Seventh Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination will follow.

Developing a Transformational Ethnic Studies in a Period of Crisis and Resistance - Rose M. Brewer
12:10 PM – Gallery, Memorial Union - Rose M. Brewer is the Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the African American & African Studies Department at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She has written extensively on Black women and families, race, class and gender, and political change. She is the coauthor of The Color of Wealth and, most recently, The United States Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement, 2010. She is the coeditor of Bridges of Power: Women's Multicultural Alliances and Is Academic Feminism Dead: Theory in Practice. Brewer earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago. The Future of Ethnic Studies Summit Keynote Speaker. Registration is required to attend this event, which includes a free buffet luncheon: http://www.las.iastate.edu/cais.

DNA at the Dinnertable: The Global Politics of Genetically Modified Food - Lisa Weasel
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Lisa Weasel is the author of Food Fray: Inside the Controversy over Genetically Modified Food. She is interested in the social dimensions of science and technology, particularly how issues of ethics, equity and politics relate to the life sciences. Her work encompasses a broad range of interdisciplinary topics, from feminist science studies and gender equity, to public engagement with science, to the relationship between biotechnology and sustainable agriculture and food security in the developing world. Weasel earned a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge. She is an associate professor of biology at Portland State University. Part of the Sigma Xi Lecture Series and the Women in STEM Series.

The Religion of Thinness - Michelle Lelwica
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Michelle Lelwica looks at our culture's devotion to thinness, exploring how we struggle with body image and the cultural messages tied to America's obsession with weight and appearance. She is the author of The Religion of Thinness: Satisfying the Spiritual Hungers behind Women's Obsession with Food and Weight as well as Starving for Salvation: The Spiritual Dimensions of Eating Problems among American Girls and Women. Lelwica studied religion at Harvard Divinity School, where she received her Doctorate of Theology in the area of Religion, Gender, and Culture. She is currently an associate professor in the Religion Department at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Part of Eating Disorder Awareness Week.