The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Coastal Carolina University will host a "Grand Obsession Piano Party" at the Waccamaw Higher Education Center in Litchfield on Tuesday, June 3, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

A reading by Perri Knize, author of "Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey" (January 2008, Simon & Schuster), will be book-ended with performances by music professor Philip Powell and his students. The memoir is about Knize's obsessive search for the perfect piano. The daughter of a professional musician, she decides, relatively late in life, to devote herself to the piano. Her quest for an instrument turns into a life lesson "about finding and pursuing passion at any age." Knize is an award-winning environmental policy reporter whose articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, Sports Illustrated, Conde Nast Traveler and Outside. She lives with her husband in Montana.

"In the best tradition of the memoir, Perri Knize's 'Grand Obsession' starts as a simple shopping expedition and ends in total existential collapse. ... It's a mark of her deftness that despite the esoteric subject matter, it reads at the pace of a mystery and the pitch of a love story," writes The New York Times Book Review.

Copies of "Grand Obsession" will be available for purchase and signing. Light refreshments will be served. Call 349-4030 to reserve a seat as seating is limited and a large crowd is expected.