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CORVALLIS, Ore. - The author of the best-selling book, "Diet for a Small Planet," will give the 2011 Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace on Wednesday, May 4, at Oregon State University.

The free, public event begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Austin Auditorium of LaSells Stewart Center, 875 S.W. 26th St., Corvallis.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of 17 books including "Diet for a Small Planet," which has sold three million copies. She is cofounder of three organizations, including Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy and, more recently, the Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education seeking to bring democracy to life.

Lappé's talk, "Getting a Grip - Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want," will address will look at the roots today's crises, from hunger and poverty to war and terrorism. Because we are creatures of the mind, she says, it is the power of "framing" - our core assumptions about how the world works - that determines outcomes.

By interweaving fresh insights, surprising facts, and stirring vignettes of ordinary people pursuing creative solutions to the most pressing global problems, Lappé will construct a new, empowering "frame" through which real solutions are already emerging worldwide.

In 1987, Lappé received the Right Livelihood Award "for revealing the political and economic causes of world hunger and how citizens can help to remedy them." Her 1971 book "Diet for a Small Planet," is considered "the blueprint for eating with a small carbon footprint since long before the term was coined," according to J.M. Hirsch of the Associated Press.

In 2008, that book was selected as one of "75 Books by Women Whose Words Have Changed the World" by members of the Women's National Book Association and Lappé was also named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats.

Now in its 28th year, this annual lectureship honors Linus Pauling, an OSU graduate and two-time Nobel Prize laureate, and his wife, Ava Helen Pauling, a noted peace activist. It is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts.