November 27, 2007

NOTE: THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT

Kentucky Author Forum is pleased to announce a sold-out event, featuring Tom Brokaw in an interview with Rick Atkinson, for the opening of their 11th season.

Tom Brokaw is one of the most trusted and respected figures in broadcast journalism.  In 2004 he stepped down after 21 years as anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News,” but he has continued reporting and producing documentaries for NBC News, as well as providing expertise during breaking news events.

Brokaw has received numerous honors, including the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award, the Emmy award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  The U.S. Army honored him with their highest award, the George Catlett Marshall Medal, first ever awarded to a journalist; and he was the recipient of the West Point Sylvanus Thayer Award, in recognition of devoted service to bringing exclusive interviews and stories to public attention.

He reported on race and poverty in 2006 in “Separate and Unequal”, on the war on terror in 2005 in “Tom Brokaw Reports: The Long War”, and has covered every presidential election since 1968.

In The Greatest Generation, his 1968 landmark bestseller, Brokaw eloquently evoked for America what it meant to come of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Now, in his new book Boom! Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the ‘60s and Today (Random House), he gives an epic portrait of another defining era as he brings to life the tumultuous Sixties, a fault line in American history.

“Boom! One minute it was Ike and the man in the grey flannel suit, and the next minute it was time to ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out.’ While Americans were walking on the moon, Americans were dying in Viet Nam. Nothing was beyond question, and there were far fewer answers than before,” he writes.

Rick Atkinson Photo by Ken Light.

Published as the 40th anniversary of 1968 approaches, Boom! explores race, war, politics, feminism, popular culture and music with the frank personal remembrances who lived the period.

Brokaw will be interviewed by Rick Atkinson, a staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post for more than twenty years. He is the author of An Army at Dawn, which won a Pulitzer in 2002, The Long Gray Line, In the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade. His most recent book is The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

Event & Ticket Information

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Visit with University of Louisville students: An interview and Q&A session with Tom Brokaw and Tom Byers, professor of English, 1 p.m., Tuesday, November 27, in Bigelow Hall, Miller Information and Technology Center, on the Belknap Campus. The campus visit is open to students, faculty and staff.

The Kentucky Center
501 West Main Street
Downtown Louisville

5:00 PM - Wine and Cheese offered by Brown-Forman, along with Carmichael’s book sale in the lobby of The Kentucky Center

6:00 PM - Interview with Tom Brokaw and Rick Atkinson

Live taping with KET: The Kentucky Network and WFPL: Louisville’s NPR News Station
Master of Ceremonies: Courier-Journal Forum Editor, Keith Runyon

7:00 PM - Q&A with audience

8:15 PM  - Ticketed Dinner with Tom Brokaw and Rick Atkinson

Note to TV stations and print media: Access to a live Kentucky Author Forum TV feed during the evening interview is always available through KET, by contacting Duncan Hart at 859-258-7296.

The University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum is also distributed for optional airing by PBS stations nationwide, under the title “A Conversation With....”

Tapes of past Kentucky Author Forums interviews are available through KET by calling 800-945-9167.

KET also offers streaming video of a selection of past Kentucky Author Forum interviews at http://www.ket.org/arts/authorforum.htm

The Kentucky Author Forum series is produced by Mary Moss Greenebaum, with Associate Producer Melissa Bernstrom, and is sponsored by the University of Louisville, Brown-Forman, and The Humana Foundation, in cooperation with Carmichael's Bookstore, The Courier-Journal, Bittners, KET, Office Furniture USA, The Kentucky Center and WFPL-89.3.

Questions should be directed to the Kentucky Author Forum office at 502-589-2884.

624 West Main, Second Floor
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Phone 502.589.2884
Fax 502.589.4334
email KYFORUM@aol.com