“Cedars” author David Guterson to give reading at Saint Martin's College

Monday, March 15, 2004

Lacey - The community is invited to a reading and talk by best-selling Pacific Northwest novelist David Guterson, author of “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

Guterson’s talk will be at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 23, at the Saint Martin’s College Worthington Center, 5300 Pacific Ave. SE. The presentation is part of the Saint Martin’s Society of Fellows’ Community Lecture Series and is free.

Best known for his novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars,” winner of the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award and Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award, Guterson also is the author of two more recent novels, the national best-seller “East of the Mountains” and “Our Lady of the Forest,” published last September.

Guterson centered “Our Lady of the Forest” around runaway teenager and itinerant mushroom picker Ann Holmes, who claims to see the Virgin Mary in the woods of North Fork, Wash. The story unfolds with the ensuing evaluation into the veracity of her story by a young priest, a chance for redemption for an embittered out-of-work logger, and the fallout on the small backwoods town at the vortex of a storm of media coverage.

Guterson, a native Washingtonian and former high school English teacher, lives on Bainbridge Island and established his journalism career writing for Sports Illustrated and Harper’s. The father of four children, his books include a collection of short stories, “The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind” and “Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense.”

For more information about Guterson’s appearance at Saint Martin’s, please contact the college, 360-491-4700.

For more information:
David Price
Associate prof., sociology and cultural anthropology
360-438-4295; dprice@stmartin.edu

Deanna Partlow, media relations coordinator
Saint Martin’s Office of Communication
360-438-4541; dpartlow@stmartin.edu