Azar Nafisi: Reading and Writing Iran

In her 2003 bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi gave an inside view of the oppression of women in her native Iran - and told the inspiring story of how she and seven of her female students defiantly formed a secret book club to discuss such prohibited classics as Madame Bovary, The Great Gatsby, and Lolita.

Showered with awards and translated into more than 30 languages, Reading Lolita in Tehran was followed in 2008 by Things I've Been Silent About, Nafisi's stunning account of growing up in thrall to a powerful and complex mother.

One year after the beginning of the "green revolution," Iran's largest protests since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Nafisi shares her latest insights in an intimate discussion that embraces both East and West. Don't miss this memorable evening with a provocative thinker, a passionate advocate for literary and political freedom, and a woman of extraordinary principle and courage.

"Remarkable...an eloquent brief on the transformative power of fiction."
- The New York Times on Reading Lolita in Tehran

Author

Azar Nafisi is a Visiting Professor and the director of the SAIS Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.  She is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which has been translated into 32 languages. She has also written for The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Guardian and The New Republic, among others.  Her children’s book (with illustrator Sophie Benini Pietromarchi)  BiBi and the Green Voice was published by the Italian Press, Adelphi, in 2006. Dr, Nafisi is currently working on two books, one tentatively titled The Republic of the Imagination, which is about the power of literature to liberate minds and peoples, and the other, Things I Have Been Silent About, about culture, history, and loss.  She lives in Washington, DC.

Moderator

Eleanor Wachtel was born and raised in Montreal, where she studied English literature at McGill University. In the fall of 1987, Wachtel moved to Toronto to work full-time as Literary Commentator on CBC Stereo's "State of the Arts," and then as writer-broadcaster for "The Arts Tonight," and Toronto reporter for "The Arts Report."  She was host of “the Arts Tonight” from 1996 to 2007, and has been host of CBC Radio's "Writers & Company" since its inception in 1990. In 1995, “Writers & Company” won the coveted CBC Award for Programming Excellence for the best weekly show broadcast nationally.  The judges noted that if they had to choose one hour of radio to take to a desert island, it would be “Writers & Company.” “Writers & Company” also won the CBC excellence award in 2003.