Acclaimed novelist Isabel Allende will visit Montana State University this fall. Allende is one of three distinguished speakers in the President’s Crossing Boundaries Speaker Series.
The second annual series welcomes speakers to campus who have crossed seemingly impassible boundaries. In addition to Allende, the series will feature Tommy Orange, an acclaimed Cheyenne and Arapaho author whose novels chronicle contemporary Native American life, and bestselling author Margot Lee Shetterly.
Allende speaks on Sept. 30. She is the author of 21 books that have sold 65 million copies in 35 languages. The Chilean-American novelist often focuses on women, weaving myth and realism together.
Tommy Orange speaks on Aug. 20 at MSU’s 2024 First Year Student Convocation. His 2018 highly celebrated debut novel "There There" follows 12 Native Americans in Oakland, California in the days leading up to the city’s inaugural Big Oakland Powwow. His new novel Wandering Stars is about epigenetic and generational trauma.
Margot Lee Shetterly speaks on October 30. She is the author of “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.” She also founded the Human Computer Project, a digital archive of stories about the women who worked in American aeronautics and space programs from the 1930s to 1980s.
All three events are free and open to the public.
