Male lecturing in Buckley Center Auditorium

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Past Speakers

Fr. Schoenfeldt’s contact with writers from the American West proved to be invaluable in the early years of the series, as he was able to attract writers who knew him or knew of him. As the series expanded, the range of writers represented changed as well. We have welcomed novelists and poets, travel writers and nature writers, scientists and historians to speak to a diverse array of classes and read from their works. Over the years, the series has been able to bring in some of the best-known writers from across the United States.

Laila Lalami

"A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too."

Martin Flanagan

"We have a large and giving land and, if you haven't seen its beauty, you haven't seen a beauty precious to the earth."

Alice McDermott

"We are surrounded by story."

Anthony Doerr

"We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can."