Prize-winning author Jack Bass, one of the South's leading journalists, will speak on the career of South Carolina's venerable U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond on Monday, Oct. 30 at 3 p.m. in Wall Auditorium at Coastal Carolina University. The event is free and open to the public.

Senator Thurmond, 97, the oldest living member of the U.S. Senate, has served in that body for nearly half a century, longer than any other Senator in American history. In his remarkable career, he has been a Democrat, a Dixiecrat and a Republican.

Bass, the author of Ol' Strom: an Unauthorized Biography, is a veteran journalist who has specialized in covering Southern politics.

In addition to writing for various newspapers and magazines, Bass is author or co-author of six other books, including Porgy Comes Home, The Orangeburg Massacre, The Transformation of Southern Politics, The American South Comes of Age, The Unlikely Heroes and Taming the Storm, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award grand prize.

A Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Bass received bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University.

Bass is professor of history and social science at the College of Charleston. He has also served as professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi. Bass is married to television cooking show host and food writer Nathalie Dupree.

The lecture is sponsored by the Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies.

For more information, call Coastal's Office of Marketing Communciations at 349-2015.