Anne Fadiman is an award-winning author, essayist, editor and teacher. Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, chronicles the trials of an epileptic Hmong child and her family living in Merced, Calif. It won a National Book Critics' Circle Award and was chosen by the Young Adult Library Association as one of its recommended titles for all students. Her best-selling essay collection Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader is a book entirely about books - from purchasing, to reading, to handling. Fadiman's most recent essay collection is At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays, in which she discloses her passions for (among other things) staying up late, reading Coleridge, drinking coffee, and ingesting large quantities of ice cream.

For seven years Fadiman edited the literary quarterly The American Scholar and her essays and articles have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, among many other publications. She has won National Magazine Awards for both reporting and essays. As the inaugural Francis Writer in Residence at Yale University, Fadiman holds the university's first endowed appointment in nonfiction writing. She also serves as both a professor in the English department and a mentor to students considering careers in writing or editing.

The Beall-Russell Lectures in the Humanities were established in 1982 with a financial gift from Virginia B. Ball of Muncie, Ind. She named the lecture series in honor of her mother, Mrs. John A. Beall, and Lily Russell, former dean of women at Baylor, both Baylor alumnae of the Class of 1910.

Mrs. Ball subsequently funded the establishment of the Beall Poetry Festival in 1993, encouraging contemporary poetry. The purpose of the lectures is to provide an opportunity for Baylor students and faculty to meet and hear lecturers renowned in the humanities.

Past lecturers have included poet Maya Angelou, journalist Bill Moyers, and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Czeslaw Milosz. The full list of past lecturers is available at the Past Lecturers page.

Mrs. Ball died in 2005, but her legacy continues through the ongoing generosity of the Ball family, whose gifts benefit both the University and the greater Waco community.

From I-35 North:

• Take the University Parks exit - turn right
• Turn right on Bagby (second light)
• Turn right on Speight (first light)
• Proceed to the 3-way stop at Speight & 4th Street. The Cashion Building is on your right.
• You may turn right for visitors' parking or left to park in the Speight Plaza Parking Garage
• When you enter the Cashion Building, take the elevator to the 5th floor
• Room 510 is to the left as you exit the elevator

From I-35 South:

• Take the University Parks exit - turn left
• Turn right on Bagby (2nd light)
• Turn right on Speight (1st light)
• Proceed to the 3-way stop at Speight & 4th Street. The Cashion Building is on your right
• You may turn right for visitors' parking or left to park in the Speight Plaza parking garage
• When you enter the Cashion building, take the elevator to the 5th floor
• Room 510 is to the left as you exit the elevator