Note about tickets: In the case where all reserved tickets have been claimed, Rush Seating will be available for this event. Anyone interested in Rush Seating should line up in the designated queue located at the front of the Martin Center, facing State of Franklin. Beginning at 7:10 pm, any empty seats will be given to patrons waiting in the Rush Seating queue.
The Martin Center cannot guarantee all patrons waiting in the Rush Seating queue will be seated for the event. Rush Seating is first come, first serve.
Bestselling author Anthony Doerr will be the keynote speaker at East Tennessee State University’s annual Festival of Ideas.
Doerr, author of ETSU’s 2024-25 Campus Read “All the Light We Cannot See,” will speak on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 7 p.m. at the ETSU Martin Center for the Arts. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Reserve tickets online at etsu.edu/ideas.
“The Festival of Ideas has become a highlight for ETSU and the region, offering an extraordinary opportunity to connect with prominent voices and innovative thinkers,” said Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle, ETSU provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs. “This year it is exciting to welcome Anthony Doerr, the author of our immensely popular Campus Read.”
Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See” spent more than 200 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and also was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Debuting at No. 2 on The New York Times bestsellers list, his latest, “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” is a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2021 and for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2022 and named a top book by many outlets including The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, NPR and TIME.
An additional Festival of Ideas speaker will be announced soon.
For more information, visit etsu.edu/ideas.
East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.
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