Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Human Rights Advocate

We Americans need to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the “war-on-terror” after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we’ve failed to make our case to the moderate, peace-loving majority of people at the heart of the Muslim World. If we want to heal the wounded relationship between Islam and the West, we have to learn how to wage peace as aggressively as we wage war.   

—David Oliver Relin

For two decades, award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin has focused on reporting about social issues and their effect on children, both in the U.S., and around the world.

In his bestselling and award-winning book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, Relin tells the stirring tale of Greg Mortenson, an American mountain climber and nurse who becomes an unlikely champion of education through the accidental relationship he developed with a village in a remote region of the Karakoram of Pakistan while on his way home from a failed attempt to summit K2.

Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.

—Tom Brokaw

Through this incredible account of humanitarian endeavor, Mortenson and Relin offer hope by suggesting that collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education in Pakistan and Afghanistan—particularly for girls—can be one of the most effective means of countering Islamic extremism in the region.

The root causes of terrorism are not extremists named Osama or Saddam. The real enemies are poverty and ignorance. Through education and economic opportunity you can offer a child enough hope, a bright enough future, that the lure of their life is stronger than the appeal of a martyr's violent death. One 250-pound smart bomb costs about $25,000. One Afghan or Pakistani primary school, built by the Central Asia Institute, costs the same amount of money, and will provide thousands of students with a balanced, nonextremist education for decades. Which, in the long run, do you really think will make us safer?

—David Oliver Relin

Three Cups of Tea has captivated readers and is being discussed at campus-wide readings and in community one-book events across the nation.  A runaway New York Times bestseller, in 2007 it was also selected as Time Magazine’s Asia Book Of The Year and as a Critic’s Choice by People Magazine. It was also awarded the 2007 Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction and chosen as the 2007 Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Book Of The Year. 

In his work as an investigative journalist, Relin has been committed to increasing awareness about critical human rights issues.  His interviews with child soldiers (including a profile of teenager Ishmael Beah, who would later author the bestseller A Long Way Gone) have been included in Amnesty International reports and his investigation into the way the INS abused children in its custody contributed to the reorganization of that agency.

David Oliver Relin is a graduate of Vassar and was awarded the prestigious Teaching/Writing Fellowship at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. After Iowa, he received a Michener Fellowship to support his groundbreaking 1992 bicycle trip the length of Vietnam. He spent two additional years reporting about Vietnam opening to the world, while he was based in Hue, Vietnam's former imperial capital. In addition to Vietnam and Pakistan, he has traveled to, and/or reported from, much of East Asia.

Relin is currently at work on a secret book about food, a children’s book with the artist Amy Ruppel and a novel about land mine survivors in Vietnam.  He is currently a Contributing Editor for Parade and over the years he has won dozens of national awards for his work as both an editor and investigative reporter.  He feels lucky to make his home in Portland, Oregon. 

Selected Lecture Topics

• Three Cups of Tea
  
• The War on Terror: Learning from Our Mistakes
  
• History and Current Politics of Southeast Asia
  
• Child Hunger and Poverty in the US & Innovative Efforts to Alleviate It
  
• Volunteerism & Public Service:  How Individuals can Change the World
  
• Travel & Personal Development
  
• Investigative Journalism
  

Selected Writings
Three Cups of Tea: One Mans Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations--One School at a Time (with Greg Mortenson, Viking, 2006)

Selected Awards
2007 Kiriyama Prize Award for Nonfiction (with Greg Mortenson)
2007 Time Magazine, Asia Book of The Year (with Greg Mortenson)
2007 Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Book Of The Year
2006 People Magazine Critic’s Choice
1992 Michener Fellowship

For more information about David Oliver Relin and his work, please go to www.davidoliverrelin.com.