FVCC hosts UM speaker author Peter Hessler

Flathead Valley Community College will host the University of Montana’s Mansfield Dialogues speaker Peter Hessler on campus on Thursday, April 4. 

The evening talk titled, “From the Reform Generation to Generation Xi” begins at 7 p.m. in the Arts & Technology Building Room 139. The event is free and open to the public. 

This event in Kalispell was made possible through a partnership between Flathead Valley Community College and University of Montana’s Mansfield Center. 

In 1996, Hessler was sent by the Peace Corps to teach for two years at a small college in Fuling, a remote town on the Yangtze River. More than two decades later, in 2019, Hessler returned to teach again in the same region, at Sichuan University. He will describe the sweeping changes he observed, both in the landscape and in the young people he taught. 

His experience became his first book “River Town,” which was published in 2001, and was followed by two others about China, “Oracle Bones” and “Country Driving.” 

Since 2000, Hessler has been a staff writer at the New Yorker, and he is also a contributing writer at National Geographic Magazine. 

The University of Montana’s Mansfield Dialogues are an annual series of discussions designed to bring speakers on contemporary issues to a wider audience. These critical community discussions are attended by high school and university students and community members across Montana and the world. 

For more information, visit fvcc.edu/honors.