Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Maraniss will deliver the seventh annual Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture at Brown University on Tuesday, April 24, 2007. His talk, titled “The Mythology of Sport,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. It is free and open to the public.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of several best-selling biographies, will deliver the seventh annual Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. The presentation, titled “The Mythology of Sport,” is free and open to the public.

The lectureship, sponsored by Brown University and the Goldway/Shearer family, was established in memory of Casey Shearer, a promising young writer and aspiring sportscaster who died in May 2000, days before he was to graduate from Brown. Previous speakers have been Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg, ESPN anchor Chris Berman ’77, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, ABC analyst Cokie Roberts, The Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell, and Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Prior to the lecture, the winners of the annual Casey Shearer Memorial Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction will be announced, including a first prize of $1,000, a second prize of $500, and two honorable mentions. Maraniss will also be signing copies of his books beginning at 6 p.m. in the lobby of Salomon Center for Teaching.

David Maraniss

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and the author of three critically acclaimed, best-selling books: They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967; When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi; and First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. His most recent book, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, was published in 2006.

During his nearly three-decade career at The Washington Post, Maraniss has won virtually every major award in journalism, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his stories about the life and career of candidate Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign for the U.S. presidency. He has been a Pulitzer finalist two other times. Raised in Madison, Wis., he began his career covering high school football and student protests at the University of Wisconsin.

Casey Shearer

Casey Shearer ’00 was a vibrant and talented member of the Brown community. An economics concentrator, he also studied Spanish, political science and literature, and helped revive Brown Student Radio (WBSR). He was best known on campus as the station’s play-by-play sports announcer and as the author of the weekly sports column “On the Case,” published in the College Hill Independent.

Shearer was born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif., where his mother, Ruth Goldway, once served as mayor. He graduated from high school in Finland, where his father, Derek Shearer, an Occidental College professor, served as U.S. ambassador. A top student at Brown, Shearer was a member of the economics honor society and received his magna cum laude pin the Friday before he was to graduate. That same day, during a regular pick-up game of basketball, Shearer’s heart stopped and he collapsed. Four days later, he died of an undetected heart virus, two months before his 22nd birthday.

For more information on this event, contact the Office of University Events at (401) 863-2474.

Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.

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