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Please check back in December 2008 for information on our 16th Annual Wallace Stegner Lecture Series.
15th Annual Wallace Stegner Lecture Series
Series Sponsors: Ambassador Bill and Mrs. Jean Lane
Media Sponsor: San Jose Mercury News
2008 Lectures
Bill McKibben
Thursday, March 20, 8:00 PM
Lecture Sponsor: Mike and Martha Kahn
Bill McKibben is an environmentalist and author who writes about global warming, alternative energy and the risks associated with genetic engineering. His essay anthology, The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life, will be published in March 2008. His books include Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future; The End of Nature; Hope, Human and Wild; Maybe One; Enough; and Wandering Home. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, he is a frequent contributor to Harper's, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone and Outside. He is also a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine. McKibben has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.
N. Scott Momaday
Tuesday, April 29, 8:00 PM
Lecture Sponsor: Matteoni, O'Laughlin & Hechtman
N. Scott Momaday is a poet, Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, playwright, painter, storyteller and professor of English and American literature. He is a Native American (Kiowa), and among his chief interests are Native American art and oral tradition. His books include House Made of Dawn; The Way to Rainy Mountain; and Angle of Geese. His essays have appeared in Natural History, American West, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times. Momaday has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award. He has held tenured appointments at University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; and the University of Arizona. He is founder and chairman of The Buffalo Trust, a non-profit foundation for the preservation and restoration of Native American culture and heritage.
Kaiulani Lee as Rachel Carson
Tuesday, May 20, 8:00 PM
Lecture Sponsor: Sand Hill Advisors
Kaiulani Lee is the actress and writer of A Sense of Wonder, a play based on the life and works of pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson. Lee portrays Carson circa 1963, just as her book Silent Spring begins to garner significant public attention. Lee has performed A Sense of Wonder for 15 years. She first performed the play for POST in 1997 and is back by popular demand. The play—made up of primarily Carson's own words—focuses on Silent Spring as well as aspects of Carson’s private life not often examined. Lee has performed the play at more than 100 universities, the Smithsonian Institute and the Sierra Club’s Centennial. She performed A Sense of Wonder on Capitol Hill in May 2007 to commemorate Carson’s 100th birthday, and Bill Moyers Journal devoted a full hour in September 2007 to Carson, Lee and A Sense of Wonder. Lee has been nominated for the Drama Desk Award on Broadway and has won the OBIE Award for outstanding achievement off-Broadway.
Series' History
Series Sponsors Ambassador Bill and Mrs. Jean Lane have sponsored the Wallace Stegner Lecture Series since its inception in 1993. The series would not be possible without their continued interest and generous support. POST sincerely thanks Bill and Jean for their enthusiasm and dedication.
The Wallace Stegner Lecture Series pays tribute to the late Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, environmentalist, longtime Peninsula resident and celebrated Stanford University English professor. Stegner is remembered as a "man of the American West," and his writings capture the beauty and significance of the West' lands and wilderness. He was also an ardent conservationist who worked to preserve the Peninsula lands he loved. A longtime friend of POST, Stegner was to host the first annual lecture series in 1993. Because his life ended before the series began, it was named in his honor.
Designed to educate and inspire, the series is dedicated to exploring the themes of land, nature and conservation from literary and artistic perspectives. Past speakers have included Wendell Berry, Dr. Jane Goodall, Robert Haas, Paul Hawken, Robert Redford and Terry Tempest Williams. All proceeds from the series benefit POST and its land-saving work.