Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks and the Making of an Oil Frontier
The next presentation in the Texas A&M Energy Institute Lecture Series, featuring Maya Rao, a staff writer for the Minneapolis Tribune, will be held on Monday, February 18, 2019 from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM in the Frederick E. Giesecke Engineering Research Building (GERB) Third Floor Conference Room. The topic will be “Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks and the Making of an Oil Frontier”
About the Presentation
As North Dakota became second to Texas in oil production, journalist Maya Rao lived in the Bakken oilfield for a year to chronicle the making of a new oil frontier that drew many investors and laborers from the Lone Star State. She briefly cashiered at a truck stop, rode with truck drivers braving toxic fumes and dangerous roads, dined with disgraced businessmen, and wove together dispatches about man camps, oil waste disposal and tribal conflicts. As the boom receded, empty trailers and idle oil equipment littered the prairie alongside the abandoned homesteads of the prairie. She will be speaking about her narrative nonfiction book, “Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks and the Making of an Oil Frontier” on February 18. Rao is a staff writer for the Minneapolis Tribune and has also written for the Atlantic, Philadelphia Inquirer, Houston Chronicle, Awl and Longreads.
