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CORVALLIS, Ore. - A symposium designed to explore ways to live on Earth without exploiting the planet - featuring speakers ranging from author Ursula K. LeGuin to environmental activist Tim DeChristopher - will be held Friday and Saturday, Feb. 14-15, at Oregon State University.

The conference, "Transformation without Apocalypse: How to Live Well on an Altered Planet," is at LaSells Stewart Center on campus. The event is free but participants should register on the Spring Creek Project website at http://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/centers-and-initiatives/spring-creek-project. Workshop spaces are limited and registration is on first-come basis.

Keynote speakers on Friday include Rob Nixon, author of "Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor," Susana Almanza, co-director of People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER), and geographer Carolyn Finney, author of the forthcoming "Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors."

Also on Friday, artist Amy Franceschini will speak on her environmentally related art projects and the work of Futurefarmers, an international collective of artists, activists, researchers and others who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political and environmental organization of space.

Saturday's speakers include DeChristopher, an environmental activist featured in the film "Bidder 70," authors LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, author and environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore, and Yes! magazine editor Sarah Van Gelder.

"It's going to take a powerful surge of human creativity, energy, and commitment to create a socially just and ecologically well-adapted future," said Charles Goodrich, director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, the symposium organizers. "So we've designed this gathering to bring together a diverse community to imagine tangible visions of new/old ways to live without exhausting the planet."

"Transformation without Apocalypse" is sponsored by the Spring Creek Project, along with OSU School of History, Philosophy, and Religion, Hundere Endowment for Religion and Culture, Anarres Project, College of Liberal Arts, and OSU Arts and Humanities Initiative.