On Thursday, April 4, nonfiction writer, conservationist, and Penn State grad Katie Fallon will speak on the University Park campus about her book Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Assembly Room of the Nittany Lion Inn. 

Katie Fallon is the author of Vulture (UPNE, 2017) and Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird (Ruka Press, 2011), as well as two books for children. Her essays and articles have appeared in a variety of literary journals and magazines, and she has taught writing at Virginia Tech, West Virginia University, and in the Low-Residency MFA programs of West Virginia Wesleyan College and Chatham University. She is also a founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia. Fallon lives in Cheat Lake, WV, with her family. 

In Vulture, Katie Fallon discusses the turkey vulture, an overlooked and under-appreciated species that plays an extremely important role in our ecosystem.  Written as a travelogue, scientific exploration, ecological memoir and love story, Vulture appeals to a wide variety of readers.  

The Evening with Katie Fallon is the final reading in this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. It is also the culmination of the slate of events surrounding the 2019 Community Read of Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, an annual event organized by the Center for American Literary Studies (CALS) and Centre County Reads (Information about additional events related to the Community Read can be found at http://cals.la.psu.edu/ and http://www.centrecountyreads.org/.) 

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a project of Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. It receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, and the University Libraries. Additional support for this reading was provided by the Penn State Sustainability Institute.  

The event is free and open to the public; no registration is necessary.
Parking at The Nittany Parking Deck is free with validation from the Nittany Lion Inn.