MOUNT VERNON — Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, will read from his work at Cornell College on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 7 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Merrill’s nonfiction works include his most recent, “Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain,” as well as “Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars.” His collections of poetry include “Brilliant Water” and “Watch Fire.”

In “Things of the Hidden God,” Merrill describes the transformative pilgrimages he made to sacred Mount Athos in Greece to visit the ancient monasteries. The book is called a personal tale of Merrill’s quest to overcome despair and aimlessness after covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

“Merrill’s great strengths as a writer have always been his ability to braid the past, present and future; his lightheartedness; and his willingness to digest those books the rest of us may never read and give the reader the gift of their essential wisdom,” said a Los Angeles Times review. “In his new book, Merrill, ever God’s fool, also gives us something of himself, of his own wisdom and transformation.”

Merrill earned the 2005 Kostas Kyriazis Award, Greece’s most prestigious journalism honor, for “Things of the Hidden God” as well as the body of his journalistic work. Named after the late owner and founder of Greece’s oldest daily newspaper, Ethnos, the award recognizes organizations and individuals that promote human values. Merrill is only the third American to receive the honor, joining Thomas Friedman and Kati Marton.

Merrill’s visit to Cornell is part of the Visiting Writer Series sponsored by Cornell’s English department.

MOUNT VERNON — “Prosperity,” a new play that follows a band of actors as they improvise a raucous comedy about community greed, murder and sacrifice, comes to the Kimmel Theatre stage at Cornell College on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 8 p.m.

This is a world-premiere co-production with Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, where the play opened Riverside’s 25th anniversary season earlier in September. Performances continue at Cornell on Oct. 7 and 8 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 9 at 2 p.m.

Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for youth, students and senior citizens. Admission is free for Cornell students, faculty, staff, emeriti faculty and retired staff. For reservations, call 895-4293.

“ ‘Prosperity’ is a madcap theatrical journey that spins tales of murder, greed, corruption, ghosts and fairies, even while developing a series of very sophisticated ideas about the nature of truth and narrative,” says director Mark Hunter, chair of Cornell’s theatre and communications studies department. “Never has learning that we all have the capacity to create our own life stories been so much fun!”

Playwright Keith Huff is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop, a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists where he also teaches and is the recipient of numerous playwriting awards and fellowships. His plays have been produced off-Broadway and nationally. He has developed plays at theaters throughout the United States including The Public Theater, Steppenwolf, Berkeley Rep, Studio Arena Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Florida Studio Theatre and Midwest PlayLabs.

The co-production is the sixth Cornell-Riverside collaboration since 1996. Riverside Theatre’s artistic directors, Ron Clark and Jody Hovland, are artists-in-residence at Cornell, and Clark appears in the play. “Prosperity” director Hunter is artistic associate at Riverside, where he has directed a production at the Riverside Theatre Shakespeare Festival each summer since its inception.

MOUNT VERNON - Cornell alumni photographers present their work – including traditional and digital ranges of the spectrum, manipulated imagery, documentary subjects, portraiture both human and canine, and landscapes of a personal and universal nature – in a homecoming exhibit opening Sunday, Sept. 18, in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery of McWethy Hall.

Featured artists in “Cornell College Alumni Photo” are David Bauer ’88, Steve Carter ’02, Bridgett Chambliss ’04, Brice Critser ’95, Clare Ellison ’02, Marie Griffin ’01, Genevieve Lally-Knuth ’02, Sarah Kellogg ’04, Stephanie Penn ’05, Jordan Running ’04, James Salaiz ’98, Jen Schneidman ’04, Patti Streeter ’97, Victoria Thomas ’98, and William Widmer ’04.

On Saturday, Oct. 15, from 3 to 5 p.m. is a homecoming reception with the artists. On Thursday, Oct. 20, at 7 p.m. in McWethy Room 222A is a lecture by University of Iowa professor Margaret Stratton, on a related topic. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The exhibition runs through Oct. 23. Admission is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday.

MOUNT VERNON - Seven Cornell College students in an upper-level French class are headed to Louisiana on Thursday, Sept. 15, for the Festivals Acadiens in Lafayette, well to the west of areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina but a haven for evacuees from the New Orleans area.

Cornell French professor Jan Boney, who was raised in Slidell, La., has been taking her classes the 1,050 miles to Lafayette for seven years. They enjoy the festival’s Cajun music, dance a lot, eat well, meet the people of Louisiana and converse with other French-speaking people. Squeezed into their van this year will be donations of socks, toiletries, backpacks for elementary school students and duffle bags and soft-sided or collapsible luggage – the latter a need identified by a Cornell administrator whose parents live in Baton Rouge, where many evacuees have relocated at least temporarily.

Boney’s students, on the first day of class Sept. 5, discussed the pros and cons of the journey, which had been a planned field trip for their course, “Francophone Cultures of North America.”

“The overall message I heard was that Francophone culture is what the course is about. Students want to go help if they can but also experience and support a culture that has been challenged a bit,” Boney says.

She plans to have a Cornell counselor talk with the students before departure, offering advice on ways to interact compassionately and respectfully with evacuees they might meet, and tips on how the students can process their own emotions.

“One of the most important things we could do would be to listen if they choose to talk about their experiences,” says Maria Neis, a junior from Iowa City. “This trip is different from every other trip that Cornell French classes have taken to Louisiana, because of the relief efforts. That we not only get to use our trip as cultural experience but as a means to help is just great.”

The class has reserved beds at a Lafayette hostel where Boney traditionally stays. Space is available because evacuees have moved on, or people who planned to attend Festivals Acadiens have canceled. Maintaining the flow of tourist dollars to Louisiana is another reason Boney didn’t want to cancel the trip. The class plans to return to Iowa on Monday, Sept. 19.

MOUNT VERNON – A few Cornell College freshmen spent their Saturday elbow to elbow with the college president, sorting donations at a Goodwill collection site. Other new students helped the college dean clean apartments in a low-income neighborhood.

They were among nearly 350 Cornell students, faculty and staff contributing 1,400 hours of community service in a single day — Saturday, Sept. 3 — before opening the school year today. Volunteers worked from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at approximately 25 sites around eastern Iowa.

New Student Orientation Service Day marked its 11th year at Cornell, where approximately three-fourths of Cornell’s nearly 1,200 students participate in service projects annually.

“Having the entire first-year class engage in service during orientation teaches them how important it is to volunteer your time and your talent, and that leadership in any form begins with service to others,” says RJ Holmes, a staff member in Cornell’s Division of Student Affairs and an alumnus who participated in Cornell’s first Service Day, in 1995. “After graduation from Cornell, I’ve made it a priority to volunteer in the communities I’ve lived in, and NSO Service Day helped start me on that path.”

Among the projects were:

- Gathering and sorting donations at Goodwill West in Cedar Rapids. Cornell President Les Garner, his wife, Katrina, and their son, William, assisted the student crew. This was one of five Goodwill locations in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City where Cornell groups worked.

- Cleaning apartments and the grounds for the Mid-America Housing Partnership at the Osada Apartments, Cedar Rapids. Brenda Tooley, in her first year as dean of the college, assisted more than 30 Cornell volunteers. The apartments could be used to house Gulf Coast residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

- Cleaning the grounds at Lisbon schools. Working at this site was RJ Holmes, a member of Cornell’s Division of Student Affairs who participated as a student in Cornell’s first Service Day, in 1995.

- Painting the dugouts and bleachers at Davis Park, Mount Vernon.

- Cleaning the facilities and exercising the dogs at the Cedar Valley Humane Society, Cedar Rapids.

- Installing insulation at a house for Habitat for Humanity, Iowa City.