October 2, 2009–Award-winning author Alexandra Fuller knows of what she writes. She lives and works in Wyoming, where oil has shaped the lives of those around her. That foundation inspired her latest book “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant,” about the life in oil-producing Wyoming of a kid who grows up with a good heart and spirit, and a lot in life that allows no escape from the oil patches.

The Wallace Stegner Center at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law will sponsor a reading and book signing by Fuller on October 7 at 7:00 p.m. in the University of Utah Marriott Library Gould Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.

Fuller’s talk will embrace issues of energy policy, environmental degradation, religion and corporate responsibility, all with the backdrop of the rough beauty of the West.

Other acclaimed authors have praised Fuller’s book as a true depiction of the Wyoming oil patch using a fictional character as its vehicle. “With her ear to the ground, she has listened to cowboys, roughnecks, mothers, fathers, wives, and children as their dreams are dashed due to a failed energy policy,” writes famed Utah author Terry Tempest Williams.

The New York Times wrote of Fuller’s book, “…whew boy, can Alexandra Fuller write. In ‘The Legend of Colton H. Bryant,’ a slender volume that tells the story of a Wyoming kid who died in an oil-field accident, Fuller strings together sentences that are as beautiful as anything you’ll read in contemporary fiction.”

The author of three books of non-fiction, Fuller’s work has been widely praised. Her debut, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood,” was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and the 2002 Booksense Best Non-fiction book. Her 2004 “Scribbling the Cat: Travel with an African Soldier” won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage.

Since 1994, Fuller has lived in Wyoming with her husband. They have three children, several horses, three dogs, three cats and a satisfactory amount of chaos.

The event is sponsored by the S.J. Quinney College of Law, the Wallace Stegner Center, the Cultural Vision Fund and the King’s English Bookshop.