Sep 19, 2013 | ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — During a visit to St. Bonaventure University Monday, Sept. 30, author Kristen Iversen will share her experiences of growing up next to a secret nuclear facility and later working at the bomb plant.

Iversen’s memoir, “Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats,” is the university’s All Bonaventure Reads (ABR) selection for 2013. She grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated “the most contaminated site in America.”

On Sept. 30, Iversen will meet with several classes and clusters of students throughout the day, followed by a public address at 7 p.m. in the Reilly Center Arena.

All first-year students received a copy of “Full Body Burden” during summer Orientation and were asked to complete it prior to the start of school. Students are engaged in book-related conversations and activities throughout their courses and various campuswide events, including an All Bonaventure Views film festival and an ABR-themed exhibition at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.

Under the backdrop of the Cold War, Rocky Flats spent more than 30 years secretly producing plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs. (The title refers to the amount of radioactive material at any time in a human body.) Iversen’s family and most of her blue-collar neighbors thought Rocky Flats made household cleaning supplies.

In the late 1970s, “as the truth began to spread, people protested at the bomb plant and worried about radioactive and toxic waste in surrounding neighborhoods,” wrote Iversen. But production of the triggers would continue until 1989 after the FBI and EPA raided the plant.

Described as part investigative journalism and part memoir, “Full Body Burden” explores secrets — not only of the government’s cover-up of nuclear contamination, but of Iversen’s own family’s silences, too, where her father’s drinking and her mother’s denial were routinely disregarded.

“We have looked for, in past years, books that had an environmental theme; ‘Burden’ is the first of that ilk that captured our attention,” said Jean Trevarton Ehman, director of the Teaching and Learning Center on campus and chair of the All Bonaventure Reads Committee.

“Our ABR ’13 theme is taken from the book’s last sentence: ‘To speak out or to remain silent is the first and most crucial decision we can make.’ We are excited to springboard programming from this theme that will engage our new students,” said Ehman.

Iversen teaches nonfiction and fiction, specializing in memoir and literary journalism, at the University of Memphis, where she is an associate professor of English and directs the MFA program in creative writing. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Denver.

She is the author of two other books, “Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth” and a textbook, “Shadow Boxing: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Reader’s Digest, Fourth Genre, and many other literary journals and publications.

Iversen has appeared on C-Span and NPR’s Fresh Air, and she has worked extensively with entities such as A&E Biography, The History Channel, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which have created a number of documentaries based on her work.

“Full Body Burden” is a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. It also was chosen by Kirkus Reviews and the American Library Association as one of the Best Books of 2012 and named 2012 Best Book about Justice by The Atlantic.

The special ABR exhibition at the Quick Center is open in the center’s mezzanine. The exhibition details the development and spread of nuclear weapons, beginning with the development of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project and following nuclear weaponry through the Cold War era to the present day.

It addresses issues including national and international security, public policy, science, technology and peaceful diplomacy. The exhibition was researched and assembled by Sean Conklin, assistant curator; Lauren Perkins, class of 2011; and Victoria Glankowski, class of 2014.

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About the University: Inspired for more than 150 years by the Catholic Franciscan values of individual dignity, community inclusiveness, and service, St. Bonaventure University cultivates graduates who are confident and creative communicators, collaborative leaders and team members, and innovative problem solvers who are respectful of themselves, others, and the diverse world around them.