Pulitzer Prize-winning author to highlight Purdue Cancer Culture and Community events this fall

October 17, 2014  


Toms River book cover


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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dan Fagin, a nationally prominent journalist on environmental health topics, will headline Purdue University's 2014 Cancer Culture & Community Colloquium with a talk at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 6, in Stewart Center's Fowler Hall.

Fagin, a science journalism professor at New York University, is the author of "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation," a book awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction that combines investigative reporting and historical research to probe a New Jersey seashore town's cluster of childhood cancers linked to water and air pollution.

"Through "Toms River," Dan Fagin uses his strengths as a journalist, gift as a storyteller and a curiosity and persistence as a researcher and professor to get to the bottom of why people were dying of cancer in this small New Jersey town," said Marietta Harrison, director of the Oncological Sciences Center, which is the Discovery Park research center leading CCC.

"While this true story is grounded in the science of what environmental factors can lead to cancer and a cancer cluster, the incredible human toll this left for residents in Toms River provides the ideal combination for informing and advancing what Purdue and Discovery Park is trying to accomplish through our Cancer Culture & Community program."

In conjunction with the Cancer Culture & Community Colloquium and Discovery Lecture by Fagin, a series of Purdue TEDx talks are planned beginning at 7 p.m., Nov. 3, in Fowler Hall. The theme for this Purdue TEDx breakout session is "Confronting Our Environmental Health Risks."

Dan Fagin

Dan Fagin

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An exhibit of works by Purdue visual and performing arts students on aspects of the "Toms River" book also is planned. Coordinated by VPA librarian Kathryn Marie Henke Evans, it will run from Oct. 20-31 in the East Gallery of the Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries in Yue-Kong Pao Hall.

Sponsors for Cancer Culture & Community, which is free and open to the public, are the Oncological Sciences Center and the Department of English, with special 2014 partner, the Center for the Environment in Discovery Park.

"The Toms River saga, so carefully and scientifically chronicled by Dan Fagin, provides an ideal window for the Purdue community into the lessons we can learn as a community about the importance and the challenges of understanding and regulating environmental health risks," said Leigh Raymond, director of the Center for the Environment and a Purdue political science professor. "We're excited to be a lead partner with the Oncological Sciences Center for this year's Cancer Culture & Community program and bring this conversation to Purdue."

Other sponsors this year are the College of Liberal Arts, Office of Public Affairs, Purdue Center for Cancer Research, Office of the Provost, Discovery Lecture Series, Patti and Rusty Rueff Department of Visual and Performing Arts, TEDxPurdueU, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education Library, Hicks Undergraduate Library and the West Lafayette Public Library.

Through a $1 million gift to Discovery Park from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment, Purdue launched the Discovery Lecture Series in 2006 to bring prominent speakers to campus.

Reviewers have described "Toms River" as "a new classic of science reporting" (The New York Times), "a gripping environmental thriller" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), "a crisp, hard-nosed probe into corporate arrogance and the power of public resistance" (Publishers Weekly), "required environmental reading" (The Philadelphia Inquirer), and "a triumph" (Nature).

In his award-winning work, Fagin recounts the 60-year saga of rampant pollution and inadequate oversight that made Toms River a cautionary example for fast-growing industrial towns from South Jersey to South China. The decades-long drama culminated in 2001 with one of the largest legal settlements in the annals of toxic dumping.

In addition to the Pulitzer for non-fiction, "Toms River" won the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, the National Academies Science Book Award, the SEJ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award and the Books for a Better Life Green Book of the Year Award.

Fagin also wrote "Toxic Deception" (2002, Common Courage Press), which in its original hardcover was a finalist for the Investigative Reporters and Editors book prize in 1997. The New York Times called it "the story of the triumph of a special interest over the public interest."

Twice, Fagin has been a key member of news reporting teams named as Pulitzer finalists. He also has won the best-known science journalism prizes in the U.S. - from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers. His recent publications include Nature, The New York Times, Scientific American, Slate and New Scientist.

A native of Oklahoma City, Fagin attended Dartmouth College, where he was the editor-in-chief and president of the student newspaper. He spent two years at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune before joining Newsday, where he covered local and state politics before assuming the environment beat, which he covered for 15 years before joining the NYU faculty in 2005.

Discovery Park's Oncological Sciences Center, in partnership with the College of Liberal Arts, launched the annual Cancer Culture & Community initiative in 2007 to explore how the arts and literature provide an outlet of expression to those struggling with cancer. Since its launch, more than more than 2,700 students have been impacted through the colloquium and related events.

The Oncological Sciences Center, created through a Lilly Endowment gift in 2005, is the Discovery Park arm of the Purdue Center for Cancer Research, building on existing research areas and is expanding Purdue's thrust into nanotechnology, drug delivery, and cancer care and prevention. 

Writer: Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu

Sources: Marietta Harrison, 765-494-1442, harrisonm@purdue.edu

Kristine Swank, operations manager, Oncological Sciences Center, 765-494-4674, kswank@purdue.edu

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp8TAnDXTSw   

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