Award-Winning Author Paolo Bacigalupi to Speak at WSC, Oct. 5
Oct. 5, 2011 -- Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi, a "Rising Star" in Science Fiction, will speak at Western State College of Colorado (WSC) at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 5 in the College Center South Ballroom. The title of Bacigalupi's talk is, "Excavating the Future: Trend Spotting in a Science-Fictional Present".
"Ship Breaker", Bacigalupi’s young adult novel, is this year’s selection for the One Book, One Valley community reading program. It is Bacigalupi’s first young adult book. This post-apocalyptic adventure is about a young boy named Nailer, who works as a “ship breaker” crawling through old oil tankers to scavenge copper wire on the post-fossil fuel gulf coast. After a brutal hurricane, Nailer and his friend Pima come across a grounded luxury ship. The goods that they can scavenge on this ship could be their means to a better life or their undoing when they find a sole, weak survivor on board.
"Ship Breaker" received the 2011 American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, Young Adult Literature.
In addition to "Ship Breaker", Bacigalupi is the author of "The Windup Girl" and "Pump Six and Other Stories". His writings have appeared in "High Country News", Salon.com, "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" and "Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine". His short stories and fiction have been nominated for numerous awards. "The Windup Girl" was named by "Time Magazine" as one of the 10 best novels of 2009 and also won the prestigious Hugo Award from the World Science Fiction Society.
One Book, One Valley events are co-sponsored by the Gunnison County Library District, Friends of the Gunnison Public Library, Gunnison Watershed RE-1J and the WSC Leslie J. Savage Library.
For more information, contact Nancy Gauss at ngauss@western.edu or (970) 943-2278.
