2008-09 Special Events

Annie Leibovitz - Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Scott Simon - Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Shirin Ebadi - Tuesday, May 19, 2009

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All Special Events begin at 7:30pm in the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall.

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Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz's witty, powerful portraits have appeared in magazines for over twenty-five years, and she has become one of the most celebrated contemporary photographers. Starting with her work for Rolling Stone, and continuing through her long affiliation with Vanity Fair and Vogue, she has established herself as an astute observer of American popular culture. Her first book, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, was published in 1983. In 1991, a retrspective of her work was mounted at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, 1970-1990, was published. In 1999, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washingington, D.C., exhibited a group of her portraits in conjunction with the publication of Women, for which Susan Sontag wrote the essays. The exhibition Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life,1990-2005, is currently on tour.

Scott Simon
Scott Simon is best known as the host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” and he has received numerous honors for his reporting, including the Overseas Press Club, George Foster Peabody, Directors Guild, and Emmy awards. Simon has hosted many public television specials, and has written for The New York Times Book Review and Op-Ed pages, The Los Angeles Times, and Gourmet Magazine (his Gourmet article on “Conflict Cuisine” recently won the International Culinary Professionals Award. He book Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan (2000) topped the LA Times nonfiction bestseller list, and was cited as one of the best books of the year in the Washington Post. His second book, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was published in 2002. His first novel, Pretty Birds (2005), about teenage girls during the siege of Sarajevo has just been followed by Windy City: A Novel of Politics.

Dr. Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and founder of Children’s Rights Support Association in Iran. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights. Upon receipt of her law degree from the University of Tehran in 1969, she passed the qualification exams to become a judge and began her career in 1970. Following the Iranian revolution in 1979, conservative clerics insisted that Islam prohibits women from being judges and Egadi lost her position. In her book Iran Awakening: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Life and Country, named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, she provides an account of her life and explains her political and religious views.