SUNDANCE — When it comes to racial issues in America, Karen Dallett says, Utahns live in a box.
A really, really white one.
Dallett is the founder of the Tree Room Author Series, an annual event that brings acclaimed authors to Sundance to share their ideas on topics of national interest.
Now in its fourth year, the popular event has been split into two series of dialogues — one exploring race in America and the other focusing on the role and influence of media.
The first of those gets under way at noon Saturday when former NBA star Charles Barkley visits Sundance. Tickets for Saturday's event are sold out.
Barkley, always outspoken during his 16-year NBA career, is the author of three books, the latest of which takes what the book's publisher calls "a frank, fearless, funny and explosive look at the reality of race and racism in America today."
Published in March 2005 by The Penguin Press, "Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?" is described as "part rant, part personal story and part investigation" in which Barkley says "everything we feel we can't say but it is high time we did."
And those are the kinds of stories and ideas Utahns need to hear, Dallett said.
"We wanted to bring more knowledge to Utah," said Dallett, who owns The Spotted Frog, an independent bookstore in Park City. "We are really living in a box here.
"People may travel because of their (LDS Church) missions or come here from other areas," she said, "but when you come back to Utah, it's a very white community. There are issues that we need to address as humanists as opposed to just being Utahns."
According to 2000 Census reports, 89.2 percent of Utah's residents are white. The national average is 75.1 percent.
Race in America was selected as topic for the dialogues in part because of racial controversy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, said Shoshuna Akerman, programs manager at Sundance.
"(After Hurricane Katrina), a lot of topics of race and class came the surface," Akerman said. "Sundance found it to be an opportune time to have a series on race in America and to take a lead role in the topic of race."
In addition to Barkley, the Tree Room Author Series on race will feature Derrick Bell, the first tenured black professor at Harvard and a civil rights lawyer; Essie May Washington-Williams, whose father is the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and her late mother a black maid who as a teenager worked for Thurmond's parents; Douglas Brinkley, a historian whose analysis and narrative of the ongoing crisis in New Orleans will be published in May; and Cornel West, professor of African-American studies at Harvard and longtime champion for racial justice.
The series on media begins March 25 when Sundance welcomes Mary Mapes, a longtime television news producer and reporter and author of "Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power."
In the book, Mapes gives her account of the fallout she experienced after September 2004, when her CBS producing and reporting team charged that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard in the early 1970s. The report was anchored by Dan Rather.
The five-part series on media also will feature Tom Fenton, formerly a CBS foreign correspondent; Andrea Mitchell, respected television journalist and wife of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan; Los Angeles-based freelance writer Marc Weingarten; and Mark Danner, a journalist with The New Yorker.
Cost for this year's events is $450 per series. The fee includes admission to the five lectures, a signed copy of the authors' latest book and brunch. A limited number of individual tickets is available for $95 each.
The Tree Room can only accommodate 80 people and the author events regularly sell out, Akerman said.
To purchase tickets, call the Sundance activities desk at 223-4567.
E-mail: jpage@desnews.com