News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 9, 2008

AUTHOR TO SPEAK AT COTTEY ON OCT. 20

Best selling author Ellen Hopkins will speak to the Cottey College campus and the Nevada community at 8 p.m. on Monday, October 20, in the Missouri Recital Hall. Admission is free.

Hopkins speaks on the writing process, life as an author, and the "stories behind the stories" in her books. Her major goal is to reach out to young adults through her novels. Her New York Times bestsellers, Crank and Glass are loosely based on the story of her daughter's addiction to crystal meth. Burned, a 2006 National Book Award nominee, and NY Times bestseller, is the story of a young woman struggling to find her place in the world in the face of abuse by the person she most adores: her father. Impulse deals with teen suicide. Hopkins has said that her books "are not about the things that happen to characters, but rather about how her characters react to those things."

The Recital Hall is inside the Haidee and Allen Wild Center for the Arts on the northeast corner of Austin and Tower streets in Nevada, Missouri.

Cottey College is working with the Nevada R-V schools to bring Ellen Hopkins to the Nevada community.