A celebration in honor of the publication of the Loren Eiseley Reader by the Loren Eiseley Society will be held April 10, 2010, 7 to 9 PM at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 "Q" Street, Lincoln Nebraska. I am looking forward to reading an excerpt from Eiseley's work at this event.

Eiseley's influence as a writer and thinker is felt far beyond Nebraska. In her introduction to the Best American Essays of 1988, Annie Dillard writes, "In this [20th] century, it was Loren Eiseley -- a scientist -- who restored the essay's place in imaginative literature and who extended its symbolic capacity." Even though I never met Eiseley, I consider him to be one of my writing teachers.