Tracie McMillan opens Libraries’ 2013 Authors Series

Tracie McMillan, an award-winning journalist and author of The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, is the first speaker in this year’s series of free author evenings sponsored by Friends of the CSU Libraries, the Poudre River Friends of the Library, City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, KUNC radio and Hilton Fort Collins.

McMillan will speak on Sept. 18, 7-9 p.m. at the Hilton Fort Collins, 425 W. Prospect Road. The event is free and open to the public – no tickets are required. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis. A book signing and sales sponsored by Old Firehouse Books will follow the program.

In The American Way of Eating, McMillan examines the reality of this country’s food industry by chronicling her own experiences working in a California garlic field, a Walmart produce department outside Detroit, and the kitchen of a New York City Applebee’s. McMillan goes beyond the food on her plate to explore the national priorities that put it there, arguing for thinking of fresh, healthy food as a public and social good.

The series will continue on Oct. 3, when novelist Francine Mathews speaks about her latest book, Jack 1939, a deft mosaic of fact and fiction that explores what might have happened if a young Jack Kennedy had traveled to Europe on a secret mission for Franklin Roosevelt on the eve of World War II.

And on Nov. 14, John Searles will bring his just-released third novel, Help for the Haunted, to Fort Collins. Searles is the Editor-at-Large of Cosmopolitan and the author of Boy Still Missing and Strange But True. He appears frequently on morning talk shows as a book reviewer and to discuss his favorite seasonal book selections. Help for the Haunted is a dark mystery, a coming-of-age novel, a riveting thriller, and a page-turning ghost story, all in one.

All free author evenings take place at the Hilton Fort Collins, 7-9 p.m.

For more information, go to http://lib.colostate.edu/mcmillan or www.poudrelibraries.org/friends.

-30-