Actor and Author Peter Coyote '64 Returns to Grinnell

Peter Coyote '64, an Emmy Award-winning narrator and accomplished actor and author, will return to Grinnell to give a lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, in room 101 of the Joe Rosenfield '25 Center. A dessert reception in the second-floor lobby of the Joe Rosenfield Center will follow. 

Coyote will reference his own life in his lecture titled "Intention: The Only Force on Earth We Can Control."

After graduating in 1964, Coyote lived in the counter-culture of the 1960s and ’70s before starting his film career at 39. He has appeared in more than 120 films, including leading roles in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and A Walk to Remember. Coyote is well-known for his voice-over work, and has done numerous documentaries and TV specials, including Ken Burns' The National Parks, The Dust Bowl, the highly acclaimed The Roosevelts, and the forthcoming Viet Nam.

In 2011, Coyote, a practicing Zen Buddhist for 40 years, was ordained as a priest and received Transmission from his teacher granting him autonomy and the right to ordain priests and establish his own lineage.  His new memoir The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education published earlier this year expands on Sleeping Where I Fall (1999), also a memoir, telling of his life and adventures during the 1960s.

As a student at Grinnell, Coyote was one of the organizers of a group of students known as the “Grinnell 14” who traveled to Washington, D.C., during the Cuban Missile Crisis, fasting and picketing for three days, protesting the resumption of nuclear testing, and supporting President Kennedy’s “peace race.”

President Kennedy invited the group into the White House (the first time protesters had ever been so recognized) and they met with the U.S. National Security Adviser McGeorge “Mac” Bundy. This meeting received national media attention and the Grinnell group photocopied the coverage and sent it to colleges across the United States, contributing to, if not precipitating, the first mass student demonstration of 25,000 in Washington in February of 1962.

Well-known for his life-long engagement in political, environmental, and social causes, Coyote received a Grinnell College Alumni Award in 2014.

Coyote's lecture is sponsored by the Center for Careers, Life, and Service; the Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights; the Office of Development and Alumni Relations; and the Peace and Conflict Studies Program.