Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and nationally acclaimed author Rick Bragg will speak to West Virginia University P.I. Reed School of Journalism students and the public at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31, in Room 459 of the WVU Business&Economics Building .
Bragg will serve as the 2006 Clark Family EmeryPeteSasser Lecturer in Journalism. The series honors former WVU P .I. Reed School of Journalism Dean Emery L.PeteSasser, who served the school from 1989 to 1994.
Bragg’s speech will be entitledWriting Memoir: Narrative Nonfiction in the Foothills of Appalachia.
Bragg is known best in West Virginia for writingI Am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story. Private First Class Jessica Lynch’s capture and rescue in 2003 during the war in Iraq captured the attention and captivated the emotions of millions of Americans.
Bragg is also the author of the critically acclaimed and best-sellingAll Over but the Shoutin’, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former national correspondent for the New York Times. He says he learned to tell stories by listening to the mastersthe people of the foothills of the Appalachians .
Bragg was born in Alabama , grew up there, and worked at several newspapers before joining the New York Times in 1994. He covered the murder and unrest in Haiti while a metro reporter there, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta . He later became Miami Bureau Chief for the Times just in time for Elian Gonzalez’s arrival and the international battle for the little boy.
He has twice won the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors’Distinguished Writing Award, and more than 50 writing awards in his 20-year career. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University .
He has taught writing in colleges and in newsrooms, currently teaching at the University of Alabama .
We are honored to have a journalist of Rick Bragg s stature come speak to students in the School of Journalism ,said Acting SOJ Dean Maryanne Reed.Rick is a world-class writer and storyteller with an ear for dialogue and an eye for detail. Like Pete Sasser, he has traveled far but never lost touch with his southern roots.
The lectureship honors former SOJ Dean Sasser, who died June 25, 1995. The Tom Clark Family established the Emery L.PeteSasser Lectureship in Journalism in his memory.
Students and scholarships were especially important to Sasser, and during his tenure, he significantly increased student scholarship funds. Sasser was described by former WVU School of Journalism Dean Guy H. Stewart asan outgoing, sociable person who had a very fine standing with his fellow journalism professionals, not only in the state but nationally.