Lecture: Dan O'Brien February 23, 2005

Dan O?Brien, the Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Environmental and Technology Studies at Carleton College, will present a speech titled ?A Template for Great Plains Restoration? at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 23 at the Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

O?Brien, a nationally-acclaimed writer, rancher, endangered species biologist and conservationist, has written several volumes of memoir and six novels about the West, including the most recent, ?The Indian Agent.? As the owner of two ranches, his award-winning memoirs have chronicled life experiences from efforts to bring back the peregrine falcon to the Rocky Mountain West to the role of the buffalo in the restoration of the western grasslands.

O?Brien has written the prize-winning books ?Eminent Domain,? ?The Contract Surgeon,? ?The Rites of Autumn,? ?Equinox,? and the autobiographical ?Buffalo for the Broken Heart,? among others. In ?Buffalo for the Broken Heart,? he chronicles the history of his ranch and his experiences in converting it from cattle to buffalo, bringing about the return of buffalo for the first time in more than 1000 years. The New York Times Book Review has called O?Brien a writer with ?a keen and poetic eye? and author John Nichols has called ?Buffalo for the Broken Heart? an ?artful, lucid, down-to earth, poetic and entertaining? book. The South Dakota Council of Teachers of English named O?Brien the 2001 Author of the Year and he was featured on South Dakota Public Broadcasting?s television special, ?A Falconer?s Memoir.? O?Brien also has been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts individual artist?s grant twice and he received the Bush Creative Arts Fellowship in 2001.

In recent years, O?Brien has visited Carleton twice to discuss his experiences in working with buffalo and this past summer, a Carleton student received an environmental studies fellowship to work on O?Brien?s Cheyenne River Ranch. O?Brien currently teaches an English course on creative non-fiction and an environmental and technology studies course on practical conservation. He lives in Whitewood, S.D.

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s library at (507) 646-4260.