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War correspondent Anna Badkhen to discuss book at UNT
What: A book reading and lecture at the University of North Texas by journalist Anna Badkhen, author of the recently published Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories, in which she shares the stories of people she met and ate with in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and other war-torn countries. Sponsored by UNT's Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism.
When: 6:30 p.m. Dec. 1 (Wednesday). A pre-lecture reception begins at 6 p.m. Where: Rooms 43/47 of UNT's Gateway Center, located at 801 North Texas Boulevard between Eagle Drive and Highland Street Cost: Free Contact: Thorne Anderson in the Mayborn School of Journalism at 940-565-2205 or thorne.anderson@unt.edu. DENTON (UNT), Texas -- Even in the midst of covering wars and conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Somalia and other nations, journalist Anna Badkhen made time to share dinner every evening with the native translators, civilians and others she met and interviewed -- whether it was a lavish four-course meal at the home of a local warlord or bread and eggs in the humble hut of a farmer. Badkhen discusses these experiences in the book, Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories, published last month. She will read excerpts from her book and discuss her reporting method and the craft of writing as a war correspondent during her free lecture Dec. 1 (Wednesday) at the University of North Texas. Sponsored by UNT's Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism, Badkhen's lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. in Rooms 43/47 of UNT's Gateway Center, which is located at 801 North Texas Boulevard between Eagle Drive and Highland Street. A reception will precede the lecture beginning at 6 p.m. Thorne Anderson, an assistant professor in the Mayborn School of Journalism, describes Peace Meals as "a nonfiction international war-riddled travelogue with recipes" and Badkhen, with whom he has worked with in Iraq, as "a fantastic traveling companion, as kind as she is courageous." "In the movies, war correspondents are often exaggerated as beautiful, smart, worldwise and fearless. Anna is all that and more," Anderson said. Peace Meals goes beyond bare war reporting into the ordinary day-to-day lives of those caught in conflict. "There is more to life than the macabre," Badkhen writes. "There is also the myriad brazen, congenial, persistent ways in which life in the most forlorn and violent places on earth shamelessly reasserts itself. Of those, sharing a meal is one of the elemental." In an interview last month for Voice of America, Badkhen said the subtitle of the book, Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs, came from an encounter she had in Afghanistan in 2001 with a group of men who were supposed to escort her safely from Jalalabad to Kabul. "Sometime along the road, my bodyguards became robbers. They tried to rob me at gunpoint, and the guns that they pointed at me were wrapped with various different candy wrappers," she told Voice of America, remembering that the Kalashnikov guns' muzzles were adorned with pink, yellow and blue bubblegum wrappers and stickers of Donald Duck. The gunmen let her go unharmed when other gunmen showed up on the road and scared them away, and Badkhen arrived in Kabul with her money intact. Badkhen is also the author of Waiting for the Taliban: A Journal Through Northern Afghanistan, which was published earlier this year as a Kindle book. She has covered wars and conflicts since 2001, beginning as correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has also appeared in the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, Ms., Marie Claire, The New Republic and Salon.com, among others. She is currently a correspondent and blogger for the Center for Investigative Reporting, the oldest nonprofit investigative news organization in the U.S. Badkhen received the 2007 Joel R. Seldin Award from the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that applies psychological knowledge and expertise to promote peace, social justice, human rights, and sustainability, for her reporting on civilians in war zones. She was a finalist in 2002 and 2005 for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in the category of international reporting.
UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108
Contact: Nancy Kolsti (940) 565-3509
Email: nkolsti@unt.edu
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