Presented with Montalvo Arts Center The Aurora Forum at Stanford University is pleased and proud to join with Montalvo Arts Center to present the first of a five-part series of public conversations on cultural and humanitarian crises stemming from the Iraq War. These conversations are part of a larger constellation of events presented by Montalvo under the rubric of IRAQ: REFRAME, an innovative series of visual, performing, and media arts at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga through April 2008.

In the words of Rijin Sahakian, the project curator, “What is happening in Iraq goes beyond the parameters of a strictly political discussion. By attending to individual life histories, experiences, and artistic practices, we will explore questions that emerge as we consider what the enormous losses of life, culture, and humanity in Iraq mean for the world as a whole.” With this in mind, our series provides a space for face-to-face contact with scholars, artists, and journalists who have first-hand knowledge of the devastation wrought by the U.S. invasion and occupation.

In this first conversation, journalist Marjorie MIller of the Los Angeles Times will interview Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid, 2004 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and author of Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War, on the effects of the war on Iraqi institutions and civilians.

ANTHONY SHADID
Reporter Anthony Shadid has written for the Associated Press, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He is the author of Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, a book based on his reporting in Iraq for which he was awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His stories from Iraq have also earned him an American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for deadline news reporting and the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire-service reporting from abroad. While at The Boston Globe, he was awarded the 2002 George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting for a series of dispatches from the Middle East. An Arab American of Lebanese descent, he was born and raised in Oklahoma and now lives in Washington, D.C. and Baghdad.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/anthony+shadid/

MARJORIE MILLER (interviewer)
Prior to being named foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times, Marjorie Miller held bureau chief positions for the newspaper in London, Jerusalem, Bonn, Mexico City and San Salvador.