Timothy Egan
is one of our nation's most highly esteemed authors and journalists. For 18
years, Egan was a Seattle-based reporter for The New York Times,
covering everything from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to the O.J. Simpson trial
to the collapse of small-town America in the Great Plains. Egan was part of a
team of Times reporters who won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for
their series, "How Race Is Lived in America."
Seamlessly
transitioning from reporter to columnist, Egan currently writes a weekly online
op-ed for the Times that is often among the publication's most
read articles. In the column,Egan places the issues of our times in
conversation with questions that go to our shared values. When he writes about
matters such as stewardship of the land, faith, elected leadership, race and
poverty, he speaks for justice and better choices by our nation.
A prolific
writer, Egan is also the author of six books. His New York Times bestseller, The
Worst Hard Time: the Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust
Bowl, won the 2006 National Book Award, which is considered one of the
nation's highest literary honors. In his most recent book, The Big
Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, Egan shares the
story of the largest-ever forest fire in America, which inspired President
Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot to pioneer land conservation
initiatives.
Perhaps
better than any writer, Egan describes to the country the special character of
Western America. In "Outposts," his weekly column for the Times,
he writes authoritatively and with graceful prose about our region's history,
politics and values.
Egan is
particularly gifted in telling the story of the Pacific Northwest. The Good
Rain, which has been a regional bestseller for 12 years, was rated one
of the 10 essential books ever written about the region in a Seattle
Post-Intelligencer poll. Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West won
the 1999 Governor's Writing Award from Washington State and the Mountains and
Plains Booksellers Association.
A
third-generation Westerner who lives in Seattle, Egan is an avid mountaineer.
He graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory School and is proud to call himself a
product of Jesuit education.