Environmental author to read at CSB

Scott Russell Sanders, author of 20 fiction and non-fiction books, will read selections from his work at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 17 in Gorecki Family Theater, Benedicta Arts Center, College of Saint Benedict. The event is free and open to the public.

The majority of Sanders' books focus on environmental themes. The award-winning author recently released a new selection of essays compiled from three decades of work, entitled Earth Works: Selected Essays.

Sanders is a 1967 graduate of Brown University, Providence, R.I., where he studied physics and English. He pursued graduate work at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., as a Marshall Scholar. Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a graduate degree in the U.K. In 1971 Sanders received his doctorate in English. He went on to teach at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., from 1971 to 2009, where he remains a distinguished professor emeritus of English. 

Sanders has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Lannan Literary Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Mark Twain Award and the Cecil Woods Award for Nonfiction. He has also been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was named the National Winner of the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award in 2010.

During his time at CSB, Sanders will also visit numerous creative writing classes at Saint John's University to speak about the process of creative writing.

Sanders' current work includes a novel and a book about the meaning of wealth. His writing examines the human place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relation between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path.