 Best-selling author David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his early and riveting reports from Vietnam, will be the next guest of the Kentucky Author Forum on Monday, April 20. The event, sponsored by U of L as part of its Bicentennial Celebration, will be held at 10 a.m. in Floyd Theater. Halberstam has written many books, including The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, The Fifties, and The Breaks of the Game. He will discuss his latest book, The Children, a chronicle of the early days of the civil rights movement. The book focuses on the personal stories of a core group of young students who risked their lives over a five-year period to dramatically change the nation. Halberstam was a newspaper reporter for The Tennessean in 1960 when he covered their first non-violent attempts to break the color barrier by sitting at segregated lunch counters in downtown Nashville. A few of those students rose to levels of significant influence, eventually advising Dr. Martin Luther King, as the civil rights movement became national in scope. Halberstam’s on-campus lecture, followed by an audience question and answer session, will be moderated by Dr. J. Blaine Hudson, assistant professor of Pan-African Studies. The lecture is free and open to all students, faculty and staff. In addition to his visit to U of L, Halberstam will appear at the Kentucky Center for the Arts on April 20 at 6 p.m. Roger Wilkins, the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University and former Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. from 1966-69, will interview Halberstam and field audience questions. The event will begin at 5 p.m. with a wine and cheese book sale, courtesy of Hawley-Cooke Booksellers and Brown Forman, Inc., followed by the interview and book-signing. Tickets are $15 and available at the Kentucky Center for the Arts (call 584-7777 or 1-800-775-7777) or visit any Hawley-Cooke location. U of L students, faculty and staff may purchase specially priced tickets to the evening interview for $5. These discounted tickets are available only at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, and university identification must be presented at time of purchase. At 8 p.m., a dinner in honor of Halberstam and Wilkins will be hosted by University President John Shumaker. A package price for all evening events is $100 ($60 tax deductible with proceeds benefiting the Kentucky Author Forum). The Kentucky Author Forum series is sponsored by the University of Louisville in cooperation with Hawley-Cooke Booksellers, the Kentucky Center for the Arts, and Kentucky Educational Television.
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