EUGENE–Author Susan Orlean, a widely acclaimed staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, will deliver the 2001 Johnston Lecture on April 5 on the University of Oregon campus.

Orlean will talk about, "Finding The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Writing About Everyday Life," at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 5, in the Alumni Lounge of Gerlinger Hall, 1468 University St. The Johnston Lecture is an annual free public event sponsored by the UO School of Journalism and Communication.

"We’re delighted that Susan Orlean, who began her career writing for the Paper Rose and Willamette Week in Portland in the late ‘70s, is returning to share her remarkable career in journalism," says Tim Gleason, dean of the School of Journalism and Communication. "She is a painstakingly careful and thorough researcher, who writes powerful stories that illuminate the human condition."

In addition to delivering the Johnston Lecture, Orlean will spend two days on campus teaching a "Writing About…" workshop in the school’s Literary Nonfiction graduate program. Other recent visiting faculty to teach "Writing About…" workshops include Barbara Ehrenreich, Alex Kotlowitz and Peter Matthiessen.

"I’m going to talk about the challenge of writing about what is called ‘ordinary life’–namely, life that doesn’t make the headlines," Orlean explained. "I’ll talk about what the challenges of that kind of writing are, what philosophical and ethical questions it raises and answers–and how to draw readers into stories they might otherwise overlook."

According to the nation’s top book reviewers, Orlean has mastered those topics. Dean Crawford of The Boston Globe praises "her ear for self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her (Joan) Didion-like deftness in description."

"Orlean’s hilariously reported, discursive narrative wanders off into Seminole history, real-estate fraud, stolen flora, and the scary, swampy Fakahatchee Strand," writes Alexandra Lange of New York magazine in her review of Orlean’s "The Orchid Thief." "Just when you fear you’re lost in the Everglades, she returns to the flower at hand, and unleashes some delirious prose."

"The Orchid Thief" is the second of three nonfiction books by Orlean and the first to be turned into a film. Orlean explains she began research on the book after being intrigued by a small item in a local newspaper about the arrest of a Florida orchid thief. The Hollywood version, renamed "Adaptation," is now being filmed with director Spike Jonze and screenplay by Charles Kaufman.

Meryl Streep plays the role of the author in the film, but Orlean says the role that Streep plays is an imaginative version of herself. Co-star Nicholas Cage plays the male lead, a renegade plant dealer obsessed with collecting wild rare orchids.

Orlean wrote her first book, "Saturday Night," a New York Times notable book, in 1990 while writing for The Boston Globe. When she left Oregon in 1982, Orlean freelanced for a few years for top magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vogue and Esquire before becoming a feature writer for the Boston newspaper.

In 1992, Orlean joined The New Yorker staff where she continues as feature writer. Her "The Orchid Thief," published in 1999, quickly became a critical and popular hit in the United States, Great Britain and France. Her third book, "The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup," came out this year, and she’s already begun research on her fourth book about Harlem and gospel.

The UO Johnston Lecture is free and open to the public as provided by an endowment from the Richard W. Johnston Memorial Project. For more information, contact Jennifer King, assistant dean for external relations, at (541) 346-5847.

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