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An environmental activist and award-winning author will discuss hydrofracking as it relates to her most recent book when she visits SUNY Cortland on Tuesday, March 27.

Sandra Steingraber will speak about the issues raised in her 2011 book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 205.

A book signing will follow Steingraber’s lecture, which is part of the College’s celebration of Women’s History Month. Both events are free and open to public.

“This is a hallmark lecture of the series,” said Caroline Kaltefleiter, an associate professor of communication studies and the coordinator of SUNY Cortland’s Women’s History Month events.

Steingraber, of Ithaca, N.Y., is a scholar in residence at Ithaca College.

She has served as the keynote speaker for conferences on human health and the environment throughout the U.S. and Canada and has been invited to lecture at many universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Yale.

Steingraber also has testified in the European Parliament, before the President’s Cancer Panel and has participated in briefings to Congress and before United Nations delegates in Geneva, Switzerland.  Interviews with her have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, on National Public Radio, “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America.”

Her book Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis was one of three chosen to be read in Sustainable Cortland’s Book Lecture Series.

“Sandra is such an eloquent speaker,” said Sheila Cohen, an associate professor of literacy and a co-coordinator of Women’s History Month events. “She speaks in a poetic way, while expressing her thoughts on environmental concerns such as hydrofracking.”

Steingraber was named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year and later received the Jenifer Altman Foundation’s first Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer.”

In 2006, Steingraber, a cancer survivor herself, received a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund. In 2009, Physicians for Social Responsibility awarded her its Environmental Health Champion Award.

She received a B.A. in biology from Illinois Wesleyan University and an M.S. in English and creative writing from Illinois State University. She earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences from University of Michigan.

The Women’s History Month event is sponsored by the College’s Women’s Studies Committee, the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies Environmental Justice Committee, Sustainable Cortland, Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County and Sierra Club Finger Lakes Group.

For more information, contact Kaltefleiter at (607) 753-4203 or caroline.kaltefleiter@cortland.edu.