Award-winning nonfiction writer, conservationist, and Penn State alumna Katie Fallon, 1999, English, will speak about her book, “Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in The Nittany Lion Inn Assembly Room on the University Park campus of Penn State.

Fallon’s visit is the final offering in Penn State ‘s 2018-19 Mary E. Rolling Reading Series and culminates events associated with Centre County’s 2019 Community Read. The reading is free and open to the public, with no advance registration required. Parking in the Nittany Parking Deck is also free with validation from The Nittany Lion Inn.

Fallon uses “Vulture” to introduce readers to the turkey vulture, an overlooked and under-appreciated species that plays an extremely important role in our ecosystem. Written as a travelogue, a scientific exploration, an ecological memoir and a love story, “Vulture” appeals to a wide variety of readers.

In addition to “Vulture,” Fallon has written “Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird”; two additional books for children; and several essays and articles which have appeared in a variety of literary journals and magazines. She has taught writing at Virginia Tech, West Virginia University, and in the low-residency MFA programs run by West Virginia Wesleyan College and Chatham University; she is also a founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia. Fallon and her family currently live in Cheat Lake, West Virginia.

The Mary E. Rolling Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program and receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and, University Libraries. Additional support for Fallon’s visit has been provided by the Penn State Sustainability Institute.  For more information on the series, visit creativewriting.psu.edu.

The annual Community Read is organized by Centre County Reads and Penn State’s Center for American Literary Studies. Additional information about the event can be found at www.centrecountyreads.org or cals.la.psu.edu.