By KELSIE BYRNE '06 AND ELIZA MURPHY '06

Acclaimed journalist and novelist David Lipsky will give a speech at School Meeting and visit classes during the week of April 18th.

Lipsky is the author of a New York Times bestseller, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, which chronicles the experience of cadets. It has received excellent reviews, including a glowing comment in The New York Times Book Review that called it, "one of the most gripping accounts of university life that I have read." Absolutely American was also rewarded with a #2 rating on Time's annual top ten non-fiction list.

Lipsky first distinguished himself as a writer at Brown University, where he published a short story in The New Yorker before he graduated.

Lipsky is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, but his work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, and The Boston Globe. At Rolling Stone, he has featured young and upcoming performers, media executives, and actors. He has also toured the country and written articles about thirty-five different college campuses.

Rolling Stone offered Lipsky a chance to write about life at West Point. At first, he was not thrilled with the idea and dismissed the offer. However, he eventually accepted, and what was originally projected to be a short feature that would take at most a few weeks to research turned into an involved work of nonfiction that traces his four-year stay from 1998 to 2002.

Lipsky wrote that he found "a place where everyone tried their hardest. A place where everyone (or at least most people) looked out for each other. A place where people- intelligent, talented people- said honestly that money wasn't what drove them. A place where people spoke openly about their feelings and about trying to make themselves better."

Lipsky will bring his unique insights and journalistic experience to campus as this year's Lambert Fellow, a position established to bring prominent, interesting writers and artists to campus to teach and inspire students.