Alison Hedge Coke
Reynolds Endowed Chair, 308.865.8672
The University of Nebraska at Kearney Reynolds Series will present Stephanie Elizondo Griest, a Chicana author and activist from South Texas on Friday, Oct. 16.
Griest will begin performing at 7 p.m. in the Fine Arts Studio Theater on campus. An autograph session and reception will take place after the reading. Reynolds Series presentations are free and open to the public.
Often described as a passionate activist, Griest co-founded the Youth Free Expression Network, an anti-censorship organization for teens that is a program of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) in New York City. She currently serves on the board of NCAC. Griest has mingled with Russian Mafia, polished Chinese propaganda and belly danced with Cuban rumba queens. These adventures inspired her memoirs “Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines,” “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana” and “100 Places Every Woman Should Go.” She has also written for the “New York Times,” “Washington Post,” “Texas Monthly,” “Latina Magazine” and the Associated Press.
Her literary and social justice work has won her a Hodder Fellowship to Princeton University, a Henry Luce Scholarship to China, the Richard J. Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting and the Gold Prize for Best Travel Book in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.
Griest has visited more than 30 countries and spent a year driving across the United States to document its history for a nonprofit educational Web site for children called “The Odyssey.” She currently resides in Iowa City, Iowa, where she is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa.
After Griest, the next presentation in the Reynolds Series will be Matthew Shenoda on Oct. 22.
For more information, contact Allison Hedge Coke, Paul and Clarice Reynolds Chair of Poetry and Writing, at 308.865.8672.
