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CORVALLIS - Natalia Rachel Singer, whose book "Scraping by in the Big Eighties" combines memoir with political commentary, will speak and read from her work on Wednesday, May 11, at Oregon State University.

Her presentation begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Valley Library rotunda. It is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.

Singer said her book is dedicated to "everyone who lived through the (19)80s convinced that the whole world had gone crazy - and who are feeling a very uncomfortable déjà vu now."

"My hope is that it will provide solace to people who thought they were the only ones who felt this way," Singer said. "It's also dedicated to my students, who were born during the Reagan years and have never lived in the America I knew as a child when, for all its flaws, the commitment to end poverty and injustice was a top-down mandate."

Singer is an associate professor of English at St. Lawrence University whose fiction and essays have appeared in Ms., Harper's, O: The Oprah Magazine, The American Scholar and dozens of journals. She also is co-editor of "Living North Country: Essays on Life and Landscapes in Northern New York."

"Scraping by in the Big Eighties" is part of the American Lives series edited by Tobias Wolff, and featuring books of literary nonfiction.

Her OSU appearance is the fourth in the OSU English Department's 2004-05 Visiting Writers Series. It is sponsored by the English department, the Valley Library, the Provost's Office, and the Craft of Writing Series.