Next week, Rogue Valley residents will have the opportunity to spend an evening with Frances Moore Lappé, the fourth United States citizen to win Sweden's Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the Alternative Nobel, for her "vision and work healing our planet and uplifting humanity."

Lappé will present "From Hope to Courage to Action: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Economy and Food," at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, in the Britt Ballroom, Southern Oregon University, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland.

Jeff Golden of Jefferson Public Radio organized the event with Wendy Siporen of The Rogue Initiative for a Vital Economy. Golden says: "We've invited Frances here because no one is more compelling when it comes to inspiring hope and workable ideas for the kind of robust, self-reliant, earth-friendly community we envision in the Rogue Valley."

Siporen says: "Lappé reminds us that as citizens and consumers, we have the power to shape our democracy and economy through our daily lives."

Lappé was born in Pendleton in 1944. In 1971, shortly after graduating from Earlham College in Indiana, she wrote her first book, "Diet for a Small Planet."

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The book sold more than 3 million copies and argued that human practices, not natural disasters, cause worldwide hunger. Lappé made the point that food scarcity results when grain, rich in nutrients and capable of supporting vast populations, is fed to livestock to produce meat that yields only a fraction of those nutrients.

In "Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity," which she wrote with Joseph Collins in 1977, Lappé went on to identify other causes of starvation: centralized control of farmland and economic pressures to produce "cash" crops rather than basic food products.

Lappé and Collins shared a vision in which communities produce the food they consume and manufacture the tools and fertilizers that they need. Lappé and Collins co-founded the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First). The New York Times described the institute as one of the nation's "most respected food think-tanks."

In 1990, Lappé co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a 10-year initiative which encourages "regular citizens to contribute to problem-solving in all dimensions of public life." Lappé served as founding editor of the Center's American News Service, which pitched solutions-oriented news stories to almost 300 newspapers nationwide.

Lappé and her daughter Anna now lead the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life.

In 2002 the two published "Hope's Edge; The Next Diet for a Small Planet." Lappé's idea of hope is something to be lived not sought after. "A lot of people think we find hope by marshaling evidence and proving there is grounds for it," Lappé says. "But hope isn't what we find in evidence; it's what we become in action."

Lappé and her daughter founded the Small Planet Fund which solicits and channels resources to democratic social movements, especially those featured in "Hope's Edge."

In that spirit, Lappé titled her next book "You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear." Her newly released "Democracy's Edge" prompted historian Howard Zinn to say: "A small number of people in every generation are forerunners, in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past the barriers of greed and power to hold a torch high for the rest of us. Lappé's one of those."

Lappé's books have been used in courses in hundreds of colleges and universities and in more than 50 countries. Her articles and opinion pieces have appeared in diverse publications. Her television and radio appearances have included PBS with Bill Moyers, "The Today Show," CBS Radio and National Public Radio.

She is a contributing editor to Yes! Magazine and a founding councilor of the World Future Council, and serves on the National Advisory Council of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Lappé has received 17 honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions. Her most recent honor was an award for Lifetime Service to Increase Planetary Awareness, granted to her and to biologist E.O. Wilson, at the AltWheels Alternative Transportation Festival in 2006.

"What an extraordinary time to be alive," Lappé has been quoted as saying. "We're the first people on our planet to have real choice: We can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life."

Tickets to Lappé's presentation are $12 to $20 on a sliding scale. Advance tickets are available at the Ashland Food Coop, Ashland and Bad Ass Coffee, Medford.