Grace College will welcome author S.J. (Nathan) Dahlstrom to its campus on Thursday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. Dahlstrom will give a public reading from his latest young adult novels, followed by a brief Q&A at the Morgan Library, 921 Connection Cir., Winona Lake. The event is free and open to the public.
“Before coming to Winona Lake, I developed a friendship with Nathan in Texas,” said Dr. John Poch, creative writing professor at Grace. “My daughters took his classes at Hutchinson Middle School, where he is famous for his middle school novel-writing class and for bringing his horse Fancy to school several times a year, racing the fastest students the length of a football field and walking Fancy through the hallways. I look forward to introducing him to the Grace community.”
Dahlstrom writes and teaches middle school in West Texas, where he lives with his wife and three children. A fifth-generation Texan, Dahlstrom’s “Wilder Good” series is a four-time winner of the Wrangler Western Heritage Award. The series has also won the Will Rogers Medallion five times, been a finalist for the Lamplighter Award four times and received a Spur award from the Western Writers of America. Interested in all things outdoors and creative, Dahlstrom writes poetry while bowhunting and collects wildflower seeds when doing ranch work. He lives by the twin mottos “Be Wilder” and “Find Beauty.”
S.J.’s writing draws on his experiences as a cowboy, husband, father— and as a founder of Whetstone Boys Ranch.
“I wrote these stories about Wilder Good for kids who grew up in the outdoors and for kids who long for the outdoors…working, fishing, hunting, farms, ranches, mountains and prairies,” said Dahlstrom. “We should not forget that we have real adventure to offer kids if we can have the courage to turn off our machines and screens and go outside.”
The reading is sponsored by the Department of the Humanities at Grace College.
To learn more about Dahlstrom, visit wildergood.com. To learn more about Grace’s creative writing minor, visit grace.edu/programs/creative-
