William PowersWilliam Powers

Author William Powers, who has worked for two decades in development aid and conservation in Latin America, Africa and North America, will discuss sustainable alternatives to a hectic lifestyle on Thursday, Jan. 17, at 4:30 p.m. at Hope College in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.

The public is invited.  Admission is free.

He will share insights from his latest book, “Dispatches from the Sweet Life:  One Family, Five Acres, and a Community’s Quest to Reinvent the World” (2018).  The book chronicles the trials and joys of his family as they strive to live sustainably off the work-and-spend treadmill in Bolivia in South America.

Powers’ essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, and on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air.  A third‐generation New Yorker, he has also spent two decades exploring the American culture of speed and its alternatives in some 50 countries around the world. He has covered the subject in his books and written about it in the Washington Post and the Atlantic.

He has written four other books in addition to “Dispatches from the Sweet Life.” “New Slow City” (2014) explores how he and his wife sought a simpler life by moving into a 350-square-foot “micro apartment” in Greenwich Village.  “Twelve by Twelve” (2010) addresses how humanity could transition to gentler, more responsible ways of living by replacing attachment to things with deeper relationships to people, nature and self.  “Blue Clay People” (2006) recounts his experience with the poverty and instability of Charles Taylor’s Liberia. “Whispering in the Giant’s Ear” (2006) is an account of living in Bolivia during a time of crisis and change.

Powers is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and an adjunct faculty member at New York University.  From 2002 to 2004 he managed the community components of a project in the Bolivian Amazon that won a 2003 prize for environmental innovation from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and he has also worked at the World Bank.  He holds international relations degrees from Brown and Georgetown.

His address is sponsored by the college’s Cultural Affairs Committee, associate dean of global education, dean for natural and applied sciences, director of general education, Department of Communication, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Green Team and Emmaus Scholars Program.

Graves Hall is located at 263 College Ave., between 10th and 12th streets.