Author Cory Doctorow will present Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture

LAWRENCE – Author, journalist, technology activist and Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow will present the Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 28, in Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

Doctorow is also a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil-liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He has an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Senior Lecturer; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

Doctorow's novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their reuse and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. His work has won the Locus, Sunburst, Ontario Library White Pine, Prometheus, Indienet and John W. Campbell Memorial awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial (for "Craphound") and British Science Fiction awards.

The Gunn Lecture, endowed by Richard W. Gunn, James Gunn's brother, has featured several science fiction scholars. Although it has also sponsored speakers on Shakespeare and Ralph Ellison, it often brings distinguished science-fiction scholars to the campus beginning with scholar Fredric Jameson, William A. Lane Professor at Duke University; and continuing with Bill Brown, Edgar Carson Waller Professor at the University of Chicago; China Miéville, British author of what has become known as the New Weird; and Nöel Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon's daughter and trustee of his literary estate, professor of critical cultures, gender and race studies at Washington State University, and juror for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The Center also recently co-sponsored a visit from Michael Chabon, prize-winning author and editor.

Jayhawk Ink bookstore will have copies of several of Doctorow's books available to purchase in Alderson Auditorium (as well as the bookstore on Level 2) and to have signed by the author after the talk.