Conor Knighton: Chautauqua Institution Lecture Series
Route 394, Chautauqua, NY 14722
“CBS News Sunday Morning” correspondent and best-selling author Conor Knighton returns to Chautauqua to close out the 2026 Chautauqua Lecture Series and our week on “The Importance of Gathering: A Collaboration with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival” with stories of the unconventional conventions, fascinating festivals, and passionate subcultures and communities he’s encountered around the country. From the “balloonatics” at the World Balloon Convention to the “high pointers” who gather to swap strategies for summiting every state’s peak, Knighton has seen first-hand how wildly different interests have a similar power to bring people together.
Knighton’s debut nonfiction book, the New York Times bestseller Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park, is an account of the year he spent wandering through America’s “best idea,” exploring the threads that tie our national parks together and that tie us to nature. He has won five Daytime Emmys as part of the “Sunday Morning” team and has won a Los Angeles Area Emmy for his work on KCET’s SoCal Connected. He’s been nominated for two additional Los Angeles Emmys and his feature reporting has been honored with a National Headliner Award and an LA Press Club Award.
A graduate of Yale University, Knighton is a native of Charleston, West Virginia, and is regular guest-host for the live music program “Mountain Stage,” heard on hundreds of NPR stations across the county.