Chicago Humanities Festival: Citizen Artist: Salman Rushdie

Chicago Humanities Festival: Citizen Artist: Salman Rushdie

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Salman Rushdie is a global exemplar of artist as citizen. Beloved for his brilliant fiction, Rushdie has helped define the literary canon with his classics Midnight’s Children and Shame. Author most recently of Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, he embodies the power and reverberations of the written word – personally and politically – more clearly than any living writer. In response to Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on the writer’s life. Living under threat of death for years, Rushdie has emerged as an outspoken advocate for the freedom of expression. In honoring him with its literary award, presented previously to icons from Arthur Miller and August Wilson to Joyce Carol Oates and Patti Smith, the Chicago Tribune recognizes not only great literary achievement but also the transformative power of the written word. Rushdie will be joined in conversation by Bruce Dold, editor of the Chicago Tribune editorial page.

This program is presented in partnership with the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row series.

Preorder your copy of Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights for $23 through the CHF box office for pickup at the program.

Presenters:

Sir Salman Rushdie is the author of eleven novels, one book of short stories and four works non-fiction. His novel Midnight’s Children, which chronicles a fascinating saga of an Indian family in mid-20th century, received the Man Booker Prize in 1981 and has been adapted for both the stage and the screen. He is also fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in the UK and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Bruce Dold was named editor of the Chicago Tribune editorial page in 2000. Under his direction the Tribune received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Dold received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1994 for a series on the death of a 3-year-old boy and the failure of the juvenile court and child welfare system to save the child. Dold received a bachelor of science in journalism in 1977 and a master of science in journalism in 1978 from Northwestern University.

Tickets and more information can be found, here.