In partnership with the Sun Valley Museum of Art, The Community Library welcomes author Azar Nafisi for a virtual conversation. Nafisi will be in conversation with Kristin Poole, artistic director at SVMoA, and Martha Williams, the Library’s programs and education manager.
Azar Nafisi is a lifelong champion and ardent supporter of the importance of Humanities and Liberal Arts and the role they play in the preservation and promotion of democracy. She is best known as the author of
the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. Earning high acclaim and an enthusiastic readership, Reading Lolita in Tehran is an incisive exploration of the transformative powers of fiction in a world of tyranny. The award-winning book was named as one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times (London).
She is also the author of a memoir about her mother titled Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter. Additionally, she wrote The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books, a powerful and passionate case for the vital role of imagination and ideas in democratic nations today to combat the rise of authoritarian states. Azar Nafisi’s book on Vladimir Nabokov, That Other World, was published by Yale University Press in June 2019. She is currently exploring the power of literature in traumatic times in her new forthcoming book, entitled Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. She lives in Washington, DC.
