Speaking of Guilford College lectures...

The 2008-2009 series was announced (and we've already paid up) and it looks to be a good one! Even if there are no Ohio Northern graduates but rather a substandard John Carroll graduate involved. Tee hee hee. ;-) That is the one to get seats for! Tim Russert, a favorite House of Gordon talking head? A mere two weeks after Election Day? Too too cool.

Khaled Hosseini - Oct. 14, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, where his father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught high school. In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry relocated the family to Paris. In 1980, they were ready to return to Kabul, but Afghanistan had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States. He earned a medical degree from the University of California-San Diego’s School of Medicine, completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and was a practicing internist between 1996 and 2004. In 2001, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner. Published in 2003, it has become an international best-seller. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was published in May 2007. In 2006, Hosseini was named a goodwill envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Tim Russert - Nov. 18, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

Russert is the managing editor and moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press since 1991, as well as political analyst for NBC Nightly News and Today. Russert serves as senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of NBC News. He anchors The Tim Russert Show, a weekly interview program on MSNBC. His two books—Big Russ and Me in 2004 and Wisdom of Our Fathers in 2006—were New York Times No. 1 best-sellers. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., he is a graduate of John Carroll University and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. He was admitted to the bar in New York and the District of Columbia. Before joining NBC News, he served as counselor in Gov. Mario Cuomo’s office and was chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He has lectured at the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan Presidential Libraries.

Sir Salman Rushdie - Feb. 10, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Rushdie is author of the international best-sellers Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. The former was recipient of the Man Booker Prize and the latter was deemed sacrilegious by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa against him in 1989. Despite that proclamation and the international controversy that followed, Rushdie went on to produce some of his most compelling work, including The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet while living under the constant threat of death. His most recent novel, Shalimar the Clown, was an international best-seller and a nominee for both the Man Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. Rushdie, a native of Bombay, India, is also a prolific essayist. Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992-2002, contains many of his most provocative articles, some of which explore his own reaction to the fatwa, as well as reactions of the media and various governments.

Anna Quindlen - April 14, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author, writes Newsweek’s popular column “The Last Word.” During the past 30 years, her work has appeared in America’s most influential newspapers and magazines and on fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists.
Her best-selling novels include Rise and Shine, Object Lessons, One True Thing and Black and Blue. While a columnist for The New York Times, Quindlen became only the third woman in the paper’s history to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page when she began the nationally syndicated “Public and Private.” A collection of those columns, Thinking Out Loud, was a national best-seller. In Loud & Clear, a collection of her Newsweek and New York Times columns, she combines commentary on American society and the world at large. In 1992 Quindlen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. She is a native of Philadelphia, Pa.