The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series will host its final lecture and reading of the semester on Tuesday with acclaimed journalist and nonfiction writer Ted Conover.
Conover will be reading excerpts from his newest book, “The Routes of Man: How Roads are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today,” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in Farrah Hall Room 120. The event is free to attend.
Ryan Browne, assistant director of undergraduate studies for the department of English, said Conover is a nationally acclaimed author that students will want to come see.
“He’s doing a reading and lecture about the subject of his new book, which looks at how roads shape human culture in various ways,” Browne said. “He’s looking at highways in Africa where truckers have been spreading AIDS, and at the checkpoints and roads in Israel and Palestine. He gets to the subject matter he’s writing about in a way few authors are able to do.”
Browne will introduce Conover before the reading and lecture. He said Conover writes about “place,” something about which students in freshman composition courses will have to learn.
“A group of us are teaching these classes, and I thought he’d be a really good author to teach about the sense of place and what that gives us,” he said.
“Conover is going to talk a little bit about his methods,” said Wendy Rawlings, a professor in the creative writing program and coordinator of the Bankhead Series this year. “He immerses himself in the world [he writes about] and tries to become part of it.”
Rawlings said she met Conover at a conference back in 2002.
“I’ve seen a lot of lectures and a lot of them are very uninspiring, but this guy held a room of us rapt,” she said. “He was giving a lecture about ‘Newjack’ and what it was like applying for this job and [having] his life threatened almost daily.”
“Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing” is a nonfiction book Conover wrote that was published in 2000. In it, he describes his experiences working as a correctional officer at the New York State prison Sing Sing for a year.
Along with “Newjack,” Conover has written several books in a style called experimental or participatory journalism. In this style, the writer goes out to actually experience the subject he or she is writing about instead of simply researching it.
“Each of his books is based on having an actual experience instead of doing just library research,” Rawlings said. “It’s like fully immersing yourself in the experience.”
Conover’s other books include “Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders With America’s Illegal Migrants,” “Whiteout: Lost in Aspen” and “Rolling Nowhere,” in which he talks about his time spent with train-hopping hobos.
“When he was getting his MFA, he decided to write a book for his thesis, ‘Rolling Nowhere,’ about hobos,” Rawlings said. “He just got on a train and hung out with these guys for a while.”
Rawlings said his writing style is “kind of like reality TV, where people do these outrageous things.”
“It’s not like ‘Jackass’ where you have someone just jumping off a building,” she said. “It’s not that he’s walking up to a hobo or a corrections officer and asking them a question, he’s becoming that person.”
Browne said Conover immerses himself in the topics about which he writes.
“In his new book, he travels all around the world and up and down these roads,” he said. “He’s able to synthesize the history and philosophical importance of the places and people he writes about.”
Conover’s lecture is sponsored by the Honors College, the Bankhead Series and First-Year English.
“He’s not doing this to grandstand,” Rawlings said. “He just genuinely wants to understand things that are different. He’s not just going to stand in front of a podium and sort of talk down to you.”
