Thursday, April 10, 2008

An Evening with Christopher Hitchens, author, journalist, and crtic

8 p.m., Eben Holden

Mr. Hitchens visits St. Lawrence with the assistance of the The Kathryn Fraser Mackay'77 Memorial Lecture Endowment.

Christopher Hitchens is among one of the best known controversial writers and critics in the media. He was a columnist for Vanity Fair, The Nation, and Slate. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and the Atlantic Monthly, among many other publications.

As foreign correspondent and travel writer, Hitchens has written from more than 60 countries on all five continents- from Afghanistan, Albania and Angola through Dublin, India, Iran, Iraq and Japan, to Vietnam, Western Sahara, Xylophagou and Zimbabwe. He is the only writer to have written, since 2000, from Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Hitchens' essays and articles have been collected or anthologized in The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Essays, Best American Essays of 2001, Best American Travel Writing of 2002, Best American Political Writing of 2004, and the "best of" collections published by The London Review of Books, The Spectator, The Nation, The New Statesman, The Weekly Standard and Best 50 Atlantic Monthly Book Reviews.

He is the author of many books including "God Is Not Great," "Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies", "Karl Marx and The Paris Commune", "The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favorite Fetish", "International Territory: The UN After Fifty Years", "The Palestine Question", "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", and "A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq."

From 1971-1981, Hitchens worked as a book reviewer in London for The Times and was social science editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement. He was assistant editor and staff writer The New Statesman, researcher/reporter for London Weekend Television and chief foreign correspondent for Daily Express.