Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Sept. 14, 2004

WILMINGTON, N.C. – University of North Carolina at Wilmington visiting journalist and novelist Bob Reiss will give a talk on researching and writing about catastrophic weather and global warming and will read from his book The Coming Storm at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23 in Bryan Auditorium in Morton Hall on the UNCW campus. The reading is sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing and is free and open to the public. After the reading, a book signing and catered reception will be available.

Reiss, who also writes under the pen-names of Scott Canterbury and Ethan Black, has written more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Purgatory Road, a novel set in Antarctica, The Road to Extrema, a study of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, and The Coming Storm, which analyzes catastrophic weather around the world.

Reiss has also written for The Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, GQ, Glamour, Parade, The Washington Post Magazine and other national publications. Many of his books and articles are based on his travels to Hong Kong, Somalia, South Africa, Egypt, Antarctica and other locations around the world. He has also sold and optioned treatments, screenplays and books to Warner Brothers, NBC and other film production companies.

Reiss’ visit this semester marks a return to UNCW, where he was the first Distinguished Visiting Writer in the creative writing program. His experience in 1996 with several hurricanes on Wrightsville Beach deepened his interest in catastrophic weather and led to several of his books and articles. Throughout the years he has maintained contact with UNCW, helping students place their writing with literary agents and publishers, promoting the creative writing program nationally and enabling the department to bring other distinguished writers to UNCW.