Famed Writer, Rancher, and Environmentalist to Speak at Carleton College

Dan O’Brien, famed western writer and Headley Distinguished Visitor-in-Residence in environmental studies, will present a public reading on Tuesday, April 27 at 5 p.m. in Boliou Hall, room 104, on the Carleton College campus. A wildlife biologist, falconer, and rancher for almost 30 years, O’Brien has used his “keen and poetic eye…” to give a bold literary voice to the Great Plains through his numerous works of award-winning fiction and non-fiction. This event is free and open to the public. For twenty years Dan O’Brien struggled to make ends meet on his cattle ranch in South Dakota. But when a neighbor invited him to lend a hand at the annual buffalo roundup, O’Brien was inspired to convert his own ranch, the Broken Heart, to buffalo. Starting with thirteen calves, “short-necked, golden balls of wool,” O’Brien embarked on a journey that returned buffalo to his land for the first time in more than a century and a half. Intent on narrating the story of his ranch’s conversion from beef to buffalo, O’Brien wove the history of the Great Plains, the hardships of ranching, and vivid portraits of the Great Plains together to create Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch (Random House, September 2001). The book was recently purchased by Universal Studios to be commissioned into a screenplay starring actor Edward Norton...more