First-Year Experience

Come along as first-year undergraduates at Cal Lutheran reach the culmination of a shared learning experience, and enjoy a special presentation by acclaimed novelist and former foreign correspondent Masha Hamilton.

Hamilton is the author of five novels including 31 Hours, which the Washington Post called one of the best novels of 2009. Her most recent novel, What Changes Everything, was also praised by the Post for its “elegantly wrought prose (which) conveys terror as well as tenderness.” She won the 2010 Women's National Book Association award and founded two world literacy projects, the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

Hamilton is currently communications director for Concern Worldwide. She began her career as a journalist in Maine, Indiana and New York City before being sent by the Associated Press to the Middle East, where she was news editor for five years including the period of the first Palestinian intifada. She then moved to Moscow, where she worked for five years during the collapse of Communism, reporting for the Los Angeles Times and NBC-Mutual Radio and writing a monthly column. She also reported from Kenya in 2006 and from Afghanistan in 2004 and 2008.

Admission is free.