Journalist to speak in Wooster
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes will speak at McGaw Chapel.
Edward Humes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of 14 books, will give the College of Wooster’s Peter Mortensen Lecture on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m.
The lecture is slated to take place at McGaw Chapel, 303 E. University St., and admission is free and open to the public. A book-signing will follow.
“Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash” was the required summer reading for all first-year students at Wooster. The book examines the waste embedded in everything Americans do, eat, buy and sell. In the examination, questions surface regarding economics, international relations, environmental impact and other cross-cutting issues surrounding the waste that humans generate. (Each person is on track to toss 102 tons of trash in their life.)
Humes has received much praise for “Garbology.” According to The Economist, “’Garbology’ is [Humes’] attempt to make sense of our historically unprecedented readiness to throw things away.”
Boston Globe writes, “He picks through our refuse like a kind of social anthropologist to see what our garbage reveals about our culture and its values.”
Humes received a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College and began his career as a journalist, receiving a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting on the U.S. military for the Orange County Register. He then began writing true crime narratives, real-life murder mysteries with a twist, followed by those with character-driven narratives about the nation’s crumbling juvenile justice system.
Humes won a PEN America Literary Award for his book set in Los Angeles’ juvenile court, “No Matter How Loud I Shout.” He also has been awarded a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for “The Forgotten,” his LA Magazine account of life inside Los Angeles’ nightmarish home for neglected children, and his book “Monkey Girl” is currently being developed for film by HBO.
The Mortensen Lecture was established in 2006 with a gift from Peter Mortensen (’56). The fund supports public lectures and/or performances related to first-year seminar. For more information call 330-263-2008.