Roxana Saberi, a freelance journalist and author who last year was held captive in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, in the auditorium of O'Shaughnessy Educational Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas.
Roxana Saberi
Her talk, the first in Minnesota Public Radio’s 2010-2011 Broadcast Journalism Series, is co-sponsored by St. Thomas' College of Arts and Sciences and the Communication and Journalism Department.
The talk is free but tickets are required. Tickets are available at any of the Twin Cities Bibelot Shops.
Dr. Kristie Bunton, chair of the St. Thomas Communication and Journalism Department, also has a very limited number of tickets. Students, staff and faculty can contact her at kebunton@stthomas.edu.
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; Saberi was working on a third master’s, in Iranian studies, at the time of her arrest.
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 is the author of Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran.
Minnesota Public Radio's Broadcast Journalist Series, now in its 14th year, commissions renowned public-broadcasting journalists for a 24-hour residency four times a year. They share insights on their craft and issues that affect our world.
