December 1, 2017

Dear Members of the Campus Community,

I am pleased to announce that David Grann '89 will come to Connecticut College on March 27 to deliver the third annual President's Distinguished Lecture. Grann is an award-winning journalist and the author of two best-selling books, “The Lost City of Z,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” as well as a highly regarded collection of essays, “The Devil and Sherlock Holmes.” In 2017, “The Lost City of Z” was released as a major motion picture, and “Killers of the Flower Moon” was chosen as a finalist for the National Book Award.

After graduating from Connecticut College, Grann took a Watson Fellowship to Mexico, which launched his career in journalism. He holds master’s degrees in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and in creative writing from Boston University, and the connections between these studies have informed much of his creative work. Grann is admired for his erudition, for his meticulous reporting, and for the sheer virtuosity of his long-form nonfiction, which demonstrates all the elegance and drama of a suspense novel.

A staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003, he has served as senior editor at The New Republic and executive editor of the newspaper The Hill. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as in many anthologies. His time on campus will include attending a class, a public lecture and a reception with students, faculty, and staff.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” has also been chosen for our Winter Reads program, which provides an opportunity for the College to come together through a shared reading experience. The book tells the forgotten history of a deadly conspiracy in the first part of the 20th century against the Osage, a Native American community in Oklahoma. The book’s themes of power, privilege, and racial injustice cast new light on the concept of “intersectionality,” this year’s theme for the Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity. We hope that faculty will find ways to incorporate the book into spring courses, and that the community will participate in other campus programs organized around it.

Copies of “Killers of the Flower Moon” are now available to students free of charge in the Office of the Dean of the College, Fanning 206, on a first-come, first-served basis. Bank Square Books will be selling copies of the book for $20 in Crozier-Williams on Dec. 6.

I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, March 27, at what should be a memorable lecture by alumnus David Grann.

Yours,
 
Katherine Bergeron
President