Jacques Leslie: A Water Watcher's Education August 9, 2008

A Water Watcher's Education
Saturday, August 9 - 7:00PM

Jacques Leslie will discuss today's global water situation. Renowned reporter and writer, Mr. Lesilie is uniquely posed to offer what we must understand to create critical, decisive change. He will read from his Harper's Magazine cover story on water scarcity, his book Deep Water, and other recent investigative work.

It was water and the damming of water which created the contemporary struggles between our industries and our natural world. The conflicts still rage where they started here at Hetch-Hetchy and continue on globally where the consequences are pertinent to us all.

For the last decade Jacques Leslie has been writing narrative nonfiction about the world’s most pressing environmental problems. His Harper’s Magazine cover story, “Running Dry: What Happens When the World Runs Short of Freshwater?” was included in The Best American Science Writing 2001 and was a finalist for the John B. Oakes award in environmental journalism. Leslie continues his exploration of water issues in his book, Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Deep Water won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, was named one of the top science books of the year by Discover Magazine, and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in nonfiction. His most recent extended effort is the cover story of Mother Jones Magazine’s January/February 2008 issue, called “The Last Empire: Can the world survive China’s rush to emulate the American way of life?” A letter to the editor called it “the best article I've read in the last 10 years—on any subject—in any magazine.”

Mr. Leslie began his journalism career covering the Vietnam War for the Los Angeles Times. He won the Sigma Delta Chi award for foreign correspondence and an Overseas Press Club citation for his work during two years in Vietnam and Cambodia. He was also expelled from South Vietnam after reporting numerous exclusive stories, including becoming the first American journalist to enter and return from Viet Cong territory in South Vietnam. After Vietnam, he was stationed successively in Phnom Penh, Washington, New Delhi, Madrid, and Hong Kong, and was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He wrote a book about his experiences called The Mark: A War Correspondent’s Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia, published in 1995. He also won the 2006 Drunken Boat Pan-Literary Award in Nonfiction for a narrative nonfiction story about a shoe repairman in his home town, Mill Valley, California.

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