Reding to be DePauw's next speaker in Kelly Writers Series

Friday, March 5, 2010
Nick Reding

GREENCASTLE -- Journalist and author Nick Reding will be the next next speaker in the Kelly Writers Series, when he gives a reading of his latest book at Peeler Auditorium.

At 7:30 p.m. March 10, Reding will read from "Methland," which has received a great deal of attention and praise since its publication last summer.

"Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town" is the story of how methamphetamine infiltrates the small town of Oelwein, Iowa, a town with a population of 6,159 and once a thriving farming and railroad community.

Tracing the connections between the lives touched by meth and the global forces that have set the stage for the epidemic, "Methland" offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.

The book is a portrait of a community under siege, of the lives the drug has devastated and of the heroes who continue to fight the war. It also probes the complicity of pharmaceutical companies and the country's immigration laws in creating this epidemic.

Now in its seventh hardcover printing, the New York Times bestseller has been widely lauded, reviewed, and referenced. Featured on the cover of the Times Book Review and listed among the year's 100 Notable Books, "Methland" won the 2009 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize.

The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune and the Seattle Times picked the book as a best book of the year. In January, the British Broadcasting Corporation purchased global movie rights to the book.

Reding's second book, "Methland" was one of the most well-received nonfiction books in the country last year. It chronicles the meth addiction of a small town in Iowa, but in many ways it mirrors the tragedy of meth addiction that has played out all over rural America in the last decade, including small towns like Greencastle.

Presented by the James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series, the program will be in the auditorium of the Richard E. Peeler Art Center and is free and open to all.

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