Join us for the Cline Community Lecture in the Humanities on April 21 at 7 p.m. in Cline Assembly Hall! This spring marks 40 years for the Cline Lecture Series, which was established and endowed by Platt Cline, Flagstaff and NAU Historian and newspaper editor, bring speakers of international stature to Flagstaff. Previous Cline Lecturers include Juan Felipe Herrera, Luis Valdez, Rebecca Solnit, Sherman Alexie, Sarah Vowell, and T.C. Boyle. Cline Lecturers are asked to answer the broadly conceived question of “what is the social usefulness of the humanities? Or “why are the humanities important?”
Guggenheim Fellow, and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Luis Alberto Urrea, will deliver the lecture, “The Typewriter in My Kitchen: One Writer’s Fable.” Urrea’s body of work, which includes 19 volumes of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, speaks compellingly to these questions. This spring marks the 20th anniversary of The Devil’s Highway, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Lannan Literary Award winner, now in its 30th printing. This non-fiction work about traversing Arizona borderlands reverberates powerfully into our present. Our university is an HSI with a commitment to Indigenous Peoples and to our rural and underserved communities, and Urrea’s work speaks deeply to our NAU and broader Flagstaff community. Urrea emphasizes that though he is known as a border writer, he is more interested in cultivating bridges.
This event is free and open to the public. Learn more about visitor parking at https://in.nau.edu/university-transit-services/guest-parking/