Born in Tennessee and reared in Ohio, Scott Russell Sanders earned his B.A. at Brown University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in English literature at Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar. In 1971 he joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he is Distinguished Professor of English. Among his more than twenty books are novels, collections of stories, and works of personal nonfiction. His latest book is A Private History of Awe, a coming-of-age memoir, love story, and spiritual testament.

Sanders has won the Lannan Literary Award and the John Burroughs Essay Award, and he has received support for his writing from the Lilly Endowment, the Indiana Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In June 2006 he was named one of five inaugural winners of the Indiana Humanities Award. Sanders is concerned with our place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the character of community, and the search for a spiritual path.

The talk is the second in the Great Nonfiction Writers Lecture Series, presented biennially by the Nonfiction Writing Program in the Department of English, which will bring four prominent writers to campus this academic year.

Co-sponsored by • Zucker Family Endowment • C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureships Fund • Goldway/Shearer family • Modern Culture & Media and The Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Media and Culture • Africana Studies Department and Rites and Reason Theatre • Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance • Department of American Civilization • Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women • Center for Environmental Studies • Sarah Doyle Women's Center • Literary Arts Program • Committee on Science and Technology Studies