Best-selling author and New Yorker staff writer David Grann will speak at Covenant College tonight.
Grann is the author of “The Lost City of Z, which is No. 7 on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list after topping the list in February. The book retraces 20th-century explorer Percy Fawcett’s mission to discover a lost city in the Amazon. Brad Pitt bought the film rights to the book, and the movie is in production.
Covenant’s Student Senate, with assistance from senior student James Harrison, invited Grann to campus.
“As one of the most highly respected long-form journalists in America today,” said Harrison, “Grann’s talent lies in the nonfiction narrative. His stories have tackled topics that range from secret water tunnel systems in New York to Polish murder mysteries to scientists on the hunt for a giant squid — all of them hinging on the common theme of obsession.”
Grann’s essay “Trial by Fire,” the story of a man executed for murdering his children by setting their house on fire, was dubbed by columnist David Brooks as the most powerful essay he read in 2009.
Grann’s most recent book is “The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession.”
Grann’s presentation will start at 8 p.m. in Sanderson Hall auditorium on the Lookout Mountain, Ga., campus, 14049 Scenic Highway. Admission is free. Call 706-820-1560 for more information.