The Harpur Dean's Distinguished Lecture was inaugurated in 1998 as an annual forum
to feature the exemplary research and scholarly and creative work that is being conducted
across the disciplines in Harpur College. These lectures also provide an opportunity
for distinguished members of the Harpur College faculty to address an audience of
their peers and students, in addition to the wider local community. The Harpur Dean's
Distinguished Lecture is open to the public.
*Dean's Distinguished Lecture is co-sponsored by the Binghamton Chapter of United
University Professions.
2020-21 Harpur Dean's Distinguished Lecture
Jaimee Wriston Colbert
Flight of the Palila – From Passion to Eco-fiction, One Writer’s Process
Jaimee Wriston Colbert, Professor of English and Creative Writing Wednesday, March 24, 2021 | 4:30 PM - (Delivered via Zoom) Register todayThe critically endangered Palila is one of the rarest birds on the planet, existing
only in a small area on Mauna Kea Mountain in Hawai’i. I became enchanted with them
as a child growing up in Hawai’i. Years later doing research for my novels, I learned
that the Palila is one of what had been fifty-six Hawaiian Honeycreepers endemic to
the islands; now just eighteen are left. This troubling statistic joins an ever-growing
list of animal and plant species disappearing around the world. Scientists have estimated
every day more than 150 species go extinct. I became interested in writing eco-fiction
in part to shed light on this travesty through what I do best, telling stories. This
talk discusses my process as a fiction writer, through childhood enchantment with
this one endangered bird to its role in my linked story collection Wild Things. I will define eco-fiction and detail my goals as an eco-fiction writer engaging
with the environment in my work. During the second half I will read excerpts from
the story “Wild Things” featuring the Palila, emphasizing my task as a fiction writer
creating empathy for her characters, while revealing nature’s role in this particular
work of eco-fiction.
Jaimee Wriston Colbert is the author of six books of fiction: Vanishing Acts, her 2018 novel, Finalist for the 2019 International Book Award in Literary Fiction;
Wild Things, linked stories, winner of the CNY 2017 Book Award in Fiction and the 2018 International
Book Award; the novel Shark Girls, finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award; Dream Lives of Butterflies, winner of the IPPY Gold Medal Award for story collections; Climbing the God Tree, winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Prize, and Sex, Salvation, and the Automobile, winner of the Zephyr Prize. A new novel, How Not to Drown, is forthcoming May 2021. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, and Prairie Schooner, and broadcast on “Selected Shorts.” She was the 2012 recipient of the Ian MacMillan
Fiction Prize for “Things Blow Up,” a story in Wild Things. Other stories won the Jane’s Stories Award and the Isotope Editor’s Fiction Prize.
She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University, where she
is a recent recipient of the 2019 SUNY Chancellor’s Award in Scholarship and Creative
Activities. She is originally from Honolulu, Hawai’i.
