Author of “Killers of the Flower Moon”

(Tahlequah, Oklahoma) - The Northeastern State University Foundation has announced David Grann, New Yorker writer and bestselling author of The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon, as the guest speaker for the 2018 Larry Adair Lectureship. Grann will offer personal insight on his book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and Birth of the FBI, on Feb. 28 at 2 p.m. in the Center for the Performing Arts on the Tahlequah Campus.

Killers of the Flower Moon has spent more than 20 weeks on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, was the finalist for the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction and was ranked number one on both Shelf Awareness and Amazons Best Books of the Year in any category.

The Killers of the Flower Moon is set in the 1920s when the Osage Indians became the wealthiest people in the world after the discovery of oil beneath their lands in Oklahoma. The Osage people were murdered in one of the most sinister crimes in American history that became one of the FBIs first major homicide investigations. The FBI team, which included one of the only Native Americans in the bureau, eventually caught one of the masterminds, but as Grann documents, there was a deeper and darker conspiracy that the bureau never exposed.

Following a bidding war for the film rights to Killers of the Flower Moon, a screenplay is now in development by Oscar winner Eric Roth, with Martin Scorsese as director and starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Peggy Glenn, director of development and executive director of the NSU Foundation, said after she read the book last summer, she shared it with NSU President Steve Turner and Larry Adair, and they both agreed that David Grann should be the 2018 lecturer.

We are honored that David Grann is returning to Oklahoma to talk about this states early days, how Osage citizens were preyed upon and even murdered because of the natural resources they owned, and how the resulting investigation gave rise to a new Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Friends and family of former Oklahoma Speaker of the House, the Honorable Larry Adair, and the NSU Foundation established the Larry Adair Lectureship Series in 2004 to create an annual forum to engage students in politics, government and public policy.

A book signing will follow the lecture in the Center for Performing Arts lobby. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Glenn at 918-444-4200 or visit nsualumni.com.