John McPhee, one of the foremost writers of contemporary American nonfiction, will give four public appearances at the University of California, Davis, Nov. 10-13.

Of particular resonance for the campus will be a public "reunion" Wednesday, Nov. 12, between the writer and UC Davis Professor Emeritus Eldridge Moores, a geologist featured in McPhee's "Assembling California" (1993). Moores guided McPhee on a 15-year series of tours across California that the author turned into a classic account of the geologic evolution of the Golden State. The free event will be at 12:15 p.m. in the University Club club room.

Later that day, McPhee will join noted nature writers UC Davis Professor Emeritus Gary Snyder and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass of UC Berkeley to discuss "Writing Nature in the 21st Century." The 4 p.m. event will take place in the AGR Hall of the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center on campus.

McPhee's visit is sponsored by the Snyder/Soderquist Distinguished Visiting Writers Series.

McPhee will make two other public appearances. On Monday, Nov. 10, he will participate in a question-and-answer session beginning at 4 p.m. in the University Club with a reception to follow. Later that week, McPhee will read from his recent works at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, in the University Club, with a reception to follow.

McPhee's work weds science and the art of narrative prose, and his writing career has been prolific and diverse. The topics of his books range widely, through professional athletes (NBA Basketball All-Star and later U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley and tennis star Arthur Ashe), the orange industry ("Oranges"), experimental aircraft ("The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed"), the merchant marine ("Looking for a Ship"), the atomic bomb ("The Curve of Binding Energy"), Alaska ("Coming Into the Country"), and the natural history of the shad ("The Founding Fish"). McPhee's writing demonstrates an economic style and artful craft, both acknowledged by the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize for "Annals of the Former World" in 1999.

After he graduated from Princeton University in 1953, McPhee worked as a television screenwriter for "Robert Montgomery Presents" in the 1950s. He then joined Time magazine as an associate editor from 1957 to 1964. He became a staff writer for The New Yorker in 1964, and "A Sense of Where You Are," a profile of basketball player Bradley, evolved to the first of 28 books. His most recent book is "The Founding Fish" (2002).

McPhee has maintained a relationship with Princeton since 1975, when he returned to teach "The Literature of Fact," a workshop in literary nonfiction that has continued over 27 years, spawning several generations of successful writers.

The annual Snyder/Soderquist Distinguished Visiting Writers Series was established in 2002 in honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and longtime UC Davis faculty member Snyder. Funded by former UC Regent and businessman Charles J. Soderquist, the program's mission is to bring to UC Davis major contemporary writers on nature, science and the humanities.