David James Duncan is the author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K, the story collection River Teeth, the nonfiction collections My Story as Told by Water and God Laughs & Plays, and two fast response activist books, Citizen’s Dissent (with Wendell Berry) and The Heart of the Monster (with Rick Bass). His work has won the Western States Book Award, three Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Awards, the American Library Association’s 2004 Award for the Preservation of Intellectual Freedom (alongside Wendell), a National Book Award nomination, an honorary doctorate from the University of Portland, and has appeared in more than fifty anthologies including The Pushcart Prizes, Best American Sports Writing, Best American Essays (twice), and Best American Spiritual Writing (six times). David has spoken far and wide on imaginative and spiritual freedom, the charms of the lay contemplative life, the tragicomedy of the writing life, the crucifixion of the living earth, and the assassination of American democracy by the Supreme Court’s creation of a bogus “Corporate Person.”
For this appearance, Duncan is writing an original piece in response to The Museum’s newest BIG IDEA project, Dams, in which he imagines a future without the four dams on the lower Snake River.
