The Kathryn Fraser Mackay Award
The Kathryn Fraser Mackay Memorial Lecture was created by Mr. & Mrs. Mackay to support a lectureship to honor the memory of Kathryn Fraser Mackay.
"Kathryn Fraser Mackay died in an aircraft accident in 1979, little more than two years after her graduation from St. Lawrence University as a Bachelor of Arts cum laude, with Honors in Philosophy. She was a young woman with a great gift for friendship -- companionable, affectionate, and generous. Bright and full of courage, Kathy waged an intellectual and spiritual battle to resolve for herself fundamental questions in philosophy and religion. This campus was where she lived the largest part of her short adult life, and this community of the young is where her memorial most fittingly belongs."
2008 Mackay Lecturer: Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens is among one of the best known controversial writers and critics in the media. He was a columnist for Vanity Fair, The Nation, and Slate. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and the Atlantic Monthly, among many other publications.
He is the author of many books including "God Is Not Great," "Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies", "Karl Marx and The Paris Commune", "The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favorite Fetish", "International Territory: The UN After Fifty Years", "The Palestine Question", "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", and "A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq."
2006 Mackay Lecturer: Richard S. Gilbert
Rev. Richard S. Gilbert graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1958, and the St. Lawrence Theological
school in 1961. He is the author on numerous works on ethics, theology and justice, including The Prophetic
Imperative, How Much Do We Deserve and Building Your Own Theology. Among his awards is the St. Lawrence
University Sol Feinstone Award for Humanitarian Service (1998).
2004 Mackay Lecturer: Mark Salzman
Mark Salzman, author and cellist, is the author of the novels The Laughing Sutra and The Soloist,
which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. His most recent novel is
Lying Awake, a provocative work about a Carmelite nun in a spiritual crisis.
Mark Salzman says that he really wanted to grow up to become a master of the Chinese Martial art of Kung Fu. He was accepted at Yale at 16 because of his proficiency on the cello, but changed his majors to Chinese language and philosophy, which eventually took him to mainland China (Changsha in Hunan Province) where he spent two years teaching English and studying traditional martial arts at their source.
His first book, Iron and Silk, was a non-fiction account of his experiences living and working in China. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, and received the Christopher Award.
His other non-fiction works include a memoir, Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, and his most recent book, True Notebooks, a surprising account of his experiences as a writing teacher at a maximum-security prison for juvenile offenders. In this heart-rendering and humorous account of Salzman's classes, we come to know the boys through their work, just as he did: their loves, their hopes, their regrets, their fears. Salzman, too, has his fears: that, working with them, he gives the boys a sense of freedom and uniqueness undetermined each time they leave the classroom. But these concerns are more than offset by the satisfaction and joy he and his students take from their collaboration.
2002 Mackay Lecturer: Charlotte Fonrobert
2002 Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford University), Jacqueleine Armijo-Hussein (Stanford), Mary Hunt, Coordinator of Women's Alliancw for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual," Hyun Kyung Chung, Union Theological Semnary Panel on "Women, God, Power: Crossing Boundaries"