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JOHNSON CITY – 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.