Roxana Saberi, a freelance journalist and author who in 2009 was held captive in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, will speak at 7 p.m. Monday, April 14, in the Woulfe Alumni Hall of the Anderson Student Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas.
Roxana Saberi
Her talk, free and open to the public, is sponsored by St. Thomas’ Student Diversity and Inclusion Services in connection with its January Term Book Club. Co-sponsors are the Luann Dummer Center for Women, Women’s Studies Program, and Sociology and Criminal Justice Department.
She will talk about her research, experiences and her book, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran. A book-signing will follow the lecture.
A native of Fargo, Saberi was Miss North Dakota in 1997, the year she graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead with degrees in communication and French. She earned master’s degrees in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University and in international relations from the University of Cambridge.
She moved to Iran in 2003 to work as the Iran correspondent for U.S.-based Feature Story News and filed reports for organizations such as NPR, BBC, ABC Radio and Fox News.
In January 2009 she was kidnapped, accused of spying for the United States and secretly detained in Iran’s notorious Evin prison. After weeks of interrogation and a trial for which she was not allowed to prepare, she was sentenced to eight years in prison. International condemnation and pressure led Iran to release her in May 2009.
Saberi also spoke at St. Thomas in fall 2010 as part of Minnesota Public Radio’s Broadcast Journalist Series.
