Writer and best-selling author Ben Fountain is coming to Eugene as the Oregon Humanities Center's Kritikos Lecturer in the Humanities.

He will speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 10, in Room 182, Lillis Hall on the UO campus. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book sale and signing.

Fountain will speak at the UO's White Stag Block in Portland the next day, May 11, also at 7:30 p.m.

Fountain is the author of an award-winning collection of short stories titled “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara” as well as an acclaimed debut novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.”
 
In “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” — a film adaptation directed by Ang Lee will be released on Veterans Day — Fountain explores the lives of eight fictional soldiers known as the Bravo Squad, who, after defeating an elite force of enemy insurgents, come home on leave from Iraq to find themselves national heroes. The novel sheds light on modern culture’s fascination with wealth, politics, celebrity and militarism, as well as the national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. 

The book was a New York Times best-seller, a National Book Award finalist and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and the inaugural PEN New England/Cerulli Award for Excellence in Sports Fiction. In his public presentations, Fountain discusses the political and cultural environments that have inspired his stories. 

For more information, see the Oregon Humanities Center website or call 541-346-3934.