Tim O'Brien, Nat'l Book Award Winner, Lecture Mar. 7

SALISBURY, MD---Tim O’Brien, National Book Award winner, reads from his works reflecting on his Vietnam experiences as part of Salisbury State University’s yearlong 75th Anniversary Celebration. 

Sponsored by the Writers-on-the-Shore Series, O’Brien will read on Wednesday, March 7, at 7 p.m. in the Wicomico Room of the Guerrieri University Center. Admission is free and the public is invited. A reception follows. 

The author–a professor at Southwest Texas State University’s Creative Writing Program-is renown for his books and, most recently, a moving essay in The New York Times Magazine about his return to Vietnam. Many of his writings are based on his war experiences from 1969-70. 

“I was walking around in a dream and repressing it all thinking that something would save me," he said about being drafted. “Even getting on the plane for boot camp, I couldn't believe any of it was happening to me, someone who hated Boy Scouts, bugs and rifles." 

Going After Cacciato (1978)–the tale of a soldier who decides to run away from the Vietnam War-won him the National Book Award and critical acclaim from The New York Times Book Review.

“It combines a surface of realistic war reportage . . . of the surrealistic effect war has on the daydreams and nightmares of the combatants. To call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby Dick a novel about whales," said the Times. 

O'Brien was against the war, but reported for service and was sent to Vietnam with the same infantry division involved in the 1968 My Lai massacre. The event figures prominently in his book In the Lake of the Woods. After Vietnam he became one of the few veteran graduate students at Harvard. When offered an internship with the Washington Post, he left Harvard to become a newspaper reporter. 

O'Brien's career as a reporter gave way to his fiction writing after publication of his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Send Me Home (1973). Other works include The Things They Carried (1990), a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, The Nuclear Age (1985) and Northern Lights (1975).

For information visit the University’s Web site at www.salisbury.edu or call 410-543-6271.