FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Author Barry Lopez to deliver Philip J. Otis Lecture at Bates

LEWISTON, Maine -- Barry Lopez, who received the National Book Award for his nonfiction work "Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape," will deliver the annual Philip J. Otis Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 11, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Bates College. The public is invited to attend without charge.

Lopez, an essayist, author and short-story writer whose nonfiction works focus on the relationship between the physical landscape and human culture, received the John Burroughs Medal for "Of Wolves and Men" (1978). He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and Pushcart Prizes in fiction and nonfiction. His six works of fiction include "Lessons from the Wolverine" (1997), "Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren" (1994) and "River Notes: The Dance of Herons" (1979). His writing regularly appears in several magazines and journals, including Harper's, Outside, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review and American Short Fiction.

Lopez also has worked as a landscape photographer and frequently collaborates with a diverse community of artists. He is now working with painter and printmaker Robin Eschner, with whom he published "Apologia," a fine-press limited-edition book in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum and The New York Public Library. He worked with playwright Jim Leonard Jr. on a stage production of Lopez's illustrated fable, "Crow and Weasel," winner of the 1990 Parents Choice Foundation award, which opened at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis. He also has worked with composer John Luther Adams on several theater and concert productions, and has written about painter Alan Magee and potter Richard Rowland.

Established in 1996 by Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele, the Philip J. Otis Lectureship commemorates their son, Philip, a member of the Bates class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mount Rainier in 1995. Otis was deeply concerned about nurturing a sense of responsibility for the natural environment, and the annual lectureship focuses on environmental issues and the spiritual and moral dimensions of ecology. The endowment also sponsors opportunities for study, exploration and reflection by students, faculty and other members of the Bates community.