Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, Shalimar the Clown and winner of numerous literary prizes, will speak at Vanderbilt University to open the Chancellor’s Lecture Series for the fall 2007 semester.
Rushdie will speak at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28, at Memorial Gymnasium on the Vanderbilt campus. Tickets are available to members of the Vanderbilt community starting on Sept. 10, and to the general public on Sept. 24.
Tickets, which are free, may be obtained at the Ticketmaster desk at Sarratt Student Center. Parking for the lecture will be available at Kensington Garage near the gym.
Rushdie will speak on “The Role of the Writer in the 21st Century.” A free reception will precede the lecture at 5 p.m.
Rushdie won The Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1981 for his novel Midnight’s Children and again in 2005 for Shalimar the Clown. He won the Whitebread Prize for Best Novel in 1988 for The Satanic Verses. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 for services to literature.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, condemned Rushdie to death in 1989 because The Satanic Verses treated the prophet Muhammad irreverently. In 1998 the Iranian government announced that it would “neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie,” although extremist Muslims continue to call for his death.
Rushdie is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University.
Media Contact: Jim Patterson (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu