New York Times Editorial Board Member and Author, Vernlyn Klinkenborg, to Speak at Williams
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - On Tuesday, Feb. 24, writer and member of The New York Times editorial board, Vernlyn Klinkenborg, will deliver a lecture titled "Writing the World" at 4 p.m. in Bronfman Science Center, room 105, on the Williams College campus.Loved for his essays on rural life that appear regularly in The Times, he also writes about "issues that have to be addressed."
"What I write about at the Times isn't just nature and the country," he said in an interview in flakmagazine. "I tend to write about what I would call the national emotional issues."
It fell to Klinkenborg to write the editorials that summed up the Sept. 11 attack "on the American consciousness."
His writing also has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The New Republic, and Harper's, among other publications.
He is the author of "Making Hay," "The Last Fine Time," "The Rural Life," and most recently, "Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile."
In "Timothy," he retells the history of one animal, a tortoise, and the subject of English naturalist Gilbert White's 18th century journal -- by simulating the creature's own thoughts.
"I was struck by how carefully [White] watched Timothy," Klinkenborg told an interviewer. "I thought to myself, it would be interesting to write a book in which the tortoise watches the natural historian."
Klinkenborg is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim, and the 1991 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award.
He has taught literature and creative writing at Fordham University, St. Olaf College, Bennington College, and Harvard University.
He received his B.A. from Pomona College and his Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Born in Colorado, he was raised on his family's Iowa farm, moved to California, and now lives on his own small farm in upstate New York.
The public is cordially invited and the event is free. An informal reception will follow the lecture. The event is sponsored by the Program in Teaching.
