Cache Valley Invited to Meet USU Convocation Speaker at Book Signing
The Cache Valley community is invited to meet Utah State University’s 2011 Connections Convocation speaker Chris Rose at a book signing for his book “1 Dead in Attic.”
Rose visits the university as the featured speaker as part of the Connections Program and the Common Literature Experience which featured the book “Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers.
The book signing with Rose is held at the USU Bookstore in the Taggart Student Center Friday, Aug. 26, from 2-4 p.m.
The convocation address, “The Zeitoun Story and Post-Katrina New Orleans,” is offered Saturday, Aug. 27, at 9:30 a.m. in the Kent Concert Hall of the Chase Fine Arts Center. USU students — new and returning — as well as members of the community are invited to the free lecture.
Rose has a broad background in journalism and, while he is now based in Maryland, he spent a great part of his career in New Orleans. A native of Washington, D.C., he graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism in 1982 and began his career as a community news writer at the “Washington Post.”
Seeking a spicier beat — and city — Rose moved to New Orleans in 1984 and for the next two decades was the “Times-Picayune” newspaper’s most popular local columnist, covering social, cultural and political trends and personalities.
Then, hurricane Katrina changed everything.
In the fall of 2005, Rose bunked down in the drowned city during the storm’s horrific aftermath, spending the next several years covering the crisis and the slow, difficult rebirth of the city. For his coverage, he received a Pulitzer Prize as part of his newspaper’s award for Public Service. Rose himself was a finalist in the Distinguished Commentary category, losing out to Nicolas Kristof of “The New York Times” and his committed coverage of the savage conditions of life in the Sudan.
The McClatchy News Service hailed Rose as “a literary avenging angel” for his work, and political humorist Harry Shearer dubbed him “The Crescent City’s Bard” on his Huffington Post blog. On the second anniversary of the storm and its attendant levee failures, Simon & Schuster published a collection of Rose’s stories from that period titled “1 Dead in Attic,” a deeply personal, dark, surreal — and at times hilarious — recounting of his days played out in a post-Apocalyptic nightmare.
The “New Republic” called “1 Dead in Attic” “The most engaging of the Katrina books, packed with more heart, honesty and wit” and the “Washington Post” proclaimed him “the voice of the tortured city”
The book climbed to No. 32 on the New York Times Bestseller List and established Rose as a popular campus and convention speaker on urban affairs, emergency preparedness, crises journalism and raising children in a post-disaster environment, as well as three lamentable personal issues that haunted him in the years following the near-death of his city, depression, divorce and addiction.
For his USU presentation, Rose has collaborated with Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the subject of the Common Literature Experience book.
Rose’s “1 Dead in Attic” and “Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers are available in the USU Bookstore.
For information about the book signing or Rose’s appearance at USU, contact Noelle Call, (435) 797-1194, noelle.call@usu.edu.