Journalist and author Pete Earley and award-winning novelist Allan Gurganus will deliver speeches at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in early September. Both events are open to the public.

Pete Earley will be the featured speaker at the Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds on Sept. 4.
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Earley, who wrote the 2006 release “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,” will be the featured speaker at the Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds on Tuesday, Sept. 4. His talk is set for 1:15 p.m. in room 409L of the School of Medicine building on the central campus, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive.

Gurganus will deliver the 2007 Ewing Halsell Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. on Sept. 5 in Lecture Hall 3.102. His novel, “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” was on the New York Times best-seller list and has sold 2 million copies.

Earley to discuss the state of mental health issues in America
Earley, a former Washington Post staff member, was brought face to face with mental health issues when his son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was arrested for breaking into and damaging a home during a psychotic episode.

Earley gained unprecedented journalistic access to the Miami-Dade County Jail for a year as he investigated mental health issues. His book suggests that prisons have become, at least to some extent, America’s mental health hospitals.

Earley interviewed inmates, family members, correctional officers, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, mental health professionals, historians, civil rights lawyers and legislators.

He also tells his son’s story and the frustration of navigating through a mental health system that he says is in desperate need of repair.

The book has drawn praise from leading individuals and organizations, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Novelist Allan Gurganus will deliver the 2007 Ewing Halsell Distinguished Lecture on Sept. 5.

Gurangus called a “Mark Twain for our age”
Gurganus’ 1989 book, “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” spent eight months on the New York Times best-seller list and brought him the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The novel has sold more than 2 million copies in 12 languages. It was adapted into a CBS movie starring Donald Sutherland, Diane Lane and Cecily Tyson.

His other works include “White People,” a collection of stories and novellas, and the novel “Plays Well with Others.” In 2006, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation named him a fellow in recognition of his fiction writing.

His essays frequently appear in The New York Times.

The Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics in the School of Medicine is presenting the lecture with support from the Ewing Halsell Foundation.

“Novelists don’t really start life till turning 40,” he has said. “By that measure, as an artist, I am just 18. I have only just begun.”

For more information, contact Will Sansom at (210) 567-2579.

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields.