Journalist Robin Wright to Speak March 6

International journalist Robin Wright will speak at Fairmont State at 7 p.m. Monday, March 6, in the Turley Center Ballroom as part of the Celebration of Ideas Lecture Series.

No tickets are required, and admission is free and open to the public. For more information, call (304) 367-4215.

"It is the goal of Fairmont State to create a campus environment where open exchange of ideas is both promoted and celebrated," said Michael Belmear, Vice President for Student Affairs. "We believe that the development of our student body must include exposure to a variety of ideas. Through this exposure, our students will be better prepared to operate in an increasingly complex society."

Wright has reported from more than 130 countries on six continents for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times of London, CBS News and The Christian Science Monitor. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Times (London), The Guardian (London), The International Herald Tribune and many others.

Her foreign tours include five years in the Middle East, two years in Europe, seven years in Africa and several years as a roving foreign correspondent, including travels throughout Latin America and Asia. She has covered a dozen wars and several revolutions. She now covers U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post.

Wright won the 1989 National Magazine Award for her reporting from Iran in The New Yorker and the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for coverage of African wars. She was also the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant. In 2001, she won the Weintal Prize for "the most distinguished diplomatic reporting." In 2003, she won the United Nations' correspondents Gold Medal award for coverage of international affairs.

Besides a long career in journalism, Wright was a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale University, Duke University, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Southern California. She also lectures extensively around the U.S. and has been a television commentator on ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN news programs, as well as many other European and Asian programs.

Among her books, "The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran" was selected as one of the 25 most memorable books of the year 2000. Her earlier book, "Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam," was reissued in 2001 with updated chapters from her travels in Afghanistan and running through the Sept. 11 attacks. She is also the author of "Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World," co-authored with Doyle McManus, which has been translated into six languages, and "In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade."