Pen Pals Author Lecture Series: Tracy Kidder

After Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Régine Chassagne read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, they decided that a dollar from each of the tickets sold on their second U.S. tour would go to Partners in Health, the organization founded by Paul Farmer, the subject of the book. Thus the power of Tracy Kidder. The writer's career spans decades, topics, and continents. Among other subjects, he has written about the advent of the personal computer (in The Soul of a New Machine, for which he won a Pulitzer), a small New England town, building a house, and his time in the Vietnam War. In each piece of nonfiction writing, Kidder generously gives us entirely believable profiles of people in richly described settings and urgent narratives. The Pen Pals lecture is a rare opportunity to hear from the man behind the stories.
Thu., Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Nov. 2, 11 a.m., 2007