Award-winning author Barry Lopez will do a reading tonight at 8 p.m. at Gerlinger Lounge for this year’s Nancy and Walker Kidd reading.
During the event Lopez will read from his new book “Light Action in the Caribbean,” which is scheduled for release in November, and the winners of the Kidd fiction writing contest will be announced.
Tom Gerald, book events coordinator for the University Bookstore, said he has worked many times with Lopez, who lives in Eugene, and knows him to be an intense and passionate person.
Lopez “has deep concerns, and those concerns translate into his writing,” Gerald said. “When you read Barry Lopez, you are reading his heart, even when it’s fiction.”
Lopez won the National Book Award for “Arctic Dreams” and has published 12 other works of fiction and nonfiction. His nonfiction work is often about his travels and his observations about nature and society.
“I think he is one of the great contemporary nature writers,” said Glen Love, a retired English professor who developed the Northwest Literature class.
Lopez described his idea of what a writer should be in an interview with Capitola Book Café.
“My ideal is that the writer is a servant in some way of the society in which he resides,” he said. “That society can be defined in a variety of ways: geographic communities, intellectual communities or even political communities.
“I feel beholden to people whom I hear from and who have spoken to me about my work.”
Lopez received his masters in creative writing from the University in 1970, and though he has since acquired fame as an author, he has maintained a private life in Eugene.
Gerald said Lopez has remained in the area because “Eugene respects his privacy.”
Tonight’s event is not only to honor Lopez, said Debra Gwartney, who is an instructor and administrator in the creative writing department, but to honor the young writers who won the Nancy Kidd contest.
“Barry Lopez’s understanding of fiction and language is so rich and accomplished,” Gwartney said.
Lopez judged the fiction writing portion of the contest, which awards cash prizes ranging from $250 to $1,000.
Gwartney said Lopez has a large local following, and anyone who loves literature will enjoy the reading.
Lopez is a world class talent, Love said, and “we’re lucky to have him in Oregon.”