As part of the Community Read, Tim O’Brien will speak at Sierra Nevada College on Sept. 21 and conduct a writing workshop ($50) the following morning from 10am-noon.

The Friday evening talk is free and open to the public. Contact the SNC Registrar’s Office to register for the workshop — (775) 881.7435 or jrainwater@sierranevada.edu.

O’Brien graduated from Macalester College in 1968 and was drafted into the Army. He served as a soldier in Vietnam in 1969-70.

He has published numerous stories and books, fiction and non-fiction, most of them connected in some way with his experience in Vietnam. He received the National Book Award in Fiction in 1979 for his novel “Going After Cacciato”. In 2005, “The Things They Carried” was named by the New York Times as one of the 20 best books of the last quarter century. It received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.