The final Kentucky Author Forum of the 2011-12 season took place on May 15, 2012 and featured journalist Ahmed Rashid, an authority on the Taliban, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.  Rashid is author of Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan. A leading journalist in Pakistan, Rashid draws on his keen knowledge of the region to explain what the future there may hold.

He was interviewed by Clarissa Ward, who was named CBS News Foreign Correspondent in Oct. 2011.  Previously, with ABC News, she spent time embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. In April, 2012, she earned a Peabody Award, one of the oldest and most prestigious awards given for outstanding work in electronic media, for her series of reports from inside Syria for the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.”

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Award-winning writer Erik Larson was the featured guest at the Kentucky Author Forum on April 16, 2012.  He was interviewed by Robert Siegel, senior host of NPR’s newsmagazine, All Things Considered.

Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts is the saga of an American father and daughter who in July 1933  found themselves, and the rest of their family, transported to the heart of Hitler’s Berlin. The father was William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered history professor from Chicago who, much to his surprise and everyone else’s, was chosen by Roosevelt to be America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany; Dodd’s daughter, Martha, was 24 years old and came along for the adventure, and to escape a dead marriage. At first this new world seemed full of energy and goodwill, nothing like what newspapers back home had portrayed. But slowly a pall of intrigue and terror fell over the family–until the cataclysmic weekend that changed things forever.

Erik Larson is also the author of Thunderstruck, Isaac’s Storm, and The Devil in the White City, among others.

Listen to this Kentucky Author Forum below:

WFPL is proud to sponsor the University of Louisville’s Kentucky Author Forum presentation of Ahmed Rashid and Clarissa Ward on May 15th at the Kentucky Center. Rashid is a journalist and author of Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is considered the world’s leading authority on the Taliban, and will be interviewed by CBS News Foreign Correspondent, Clarissa Ward.

Update:  Congratulations to Cassie Carney.  Cassie has won two tickets to the KAF interview and dinner with Rashid and Ward.

If you would like to win tickets to the interview and dinner with Rashid and an autographed copy of his book, just email us your name, phone number, and address. We’ll draw a name and post the winner here on Monday, May 7th at Noon.

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WFPL is proud to sponsor the University of Louisville’s Kentucky Author Forum presentation of Erik Larson and Robert Siegel on April 16th at the Kentucky Center. Larson is an historical non-fiction author whose new book, In the Garden of Beasts is due out in May. He will be interviewed by senior host of NPR’s All Things Considered, Robert Siegel.

Update:  Congratulations to Shelda Hale.  Shelda has won two tickets to the KAF interview and dinner with Larson and Siegel.

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The Kentucky Author Forum on Feb. 22, 2012, featured Michio Kaku, a leader in the field of theoretical physics, cofounder of string field theory, and author of Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100.  Kaku was interviewed by James Canton, global futurist, social scientist, author, CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government on future trends.

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku—author of Physics of the Impossible, Beyond Einstein and Hyperspace — gives us a provocative and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs.

According to Kaku, by 2100 it is likely that we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like magicians, move objects around with the power of our minds. Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves, using GPS; using molecular medicine, scientists will be able to grow almost every organ of the body and cure genetic diseases; and, advances in nanotechnology may lead to the fabled space elevator, which would propel humans hundreds of miles above the earth’s atmosphere at the push of a button.

Hear this Kentucky Author Forum in full below:

Siddhartha Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at Columbia University, and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center, has devoted his life to caring for cancer patients. As a researcher, he runs a laboratory on the forefront of discovering new cancer drugs for leukemia and mylodysplasia.  He spoke about his work at the Kentucky Author Forum on Oct. 13, 2011, with Harvard University’s David Scadden, M.D., conducting the interview.

Dr. Mukherjee’s book, The Emperor of All Maladies, details the evolution of diagnosis and treatment of human cancers from ancient Egypt to the latest developments in chemotherapy and targeted therapy. Approaching the subject with the passion of a biographer and the story-telling skill of a novelist, he includes personal observations about his own coming of age as a physician. Oprah Magazine listed it as one of the “Top 10 Books of 2010″. It was also listed in “The 10 Best Books of 2010″ by The New York Times and “The Top 10 Nonfiction Books” by Time.

In 2011 The Emperor of All Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category. His debut book was also nominated as a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, one of the most prestigious prizes for writing in the U.S. Time named Dr. Mukherjee in its “100 Most Influential People” list for 2011, along with artists, politicians and scientists.

The full conversation from the Kentucky Author Forum is presented below.

Grammy-winner Rosanne Cash has recorded fourteen albums, charting 21 Top-40 country singles and two gold records. For more than three decades she has been one of the most compelling figures in popular music, having moved gracefully from Nashville stardom to critical recognition as a singer-songwriter and author of essays and short stories.

A self-portrait written with intelligence, honesty, wit and warmth, Composed is Rosanne Cash’s testament to the power of art, tradition and love to transform a life.

On Sept. 26, 2011 at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, Rosanne Cash was interviewed by Nick Spitzer, producer and host of public radio’s American Routes. Spitzer is a folklorist and a professor of anthropology and American studies at Tulane University, specializing in American music and the cultures of the Gulf South.

WFPL is proud to sponsor the University of Louisville’s Kentucky Author Forum presentation of Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee and Dr. David Scadden on October 13th at the Kentucky Center. Dr. Mukherjee is a Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, staff physician at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City and the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer.

Update:  Congratulations to Charlene Sexton.  She has won two tickets to the KAF interview and dinner with Dr. Mukherjee.  If you’d like to attend, you can still purchase tickets at the Kentucky Center.

If you would like to win tickets to the interview and dinner with Dr. Mukherjee and an autographed copy of his book, just email us your name, phone number, and address. We’ll draw a name and post the winner here on Monday, October 10th at Noon.

Read our contest policy

Poet Billy Collins was the featuerd guest at the Kentucky Author Forum on April 21, 2011.  He was interviewed by Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor.  You can listen to the conversation below.

Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003. He is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including the forthcoming Horoscopes for the Dead.  Garrison Keillor is the author of more than a dozen books, and was the featured author at Kentucky Author Forum in November, 2002.

The Kentucky Author Forum on Feb. 15, 2011 featured Dr. Eric Kandel, author of In Search of Memory: the Emergence of a New Science of Mind.  Dr. Kandel is a Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher, Professor at Columbia University, and Director of the Kavli Institute for brain science.  He has recently been seen on the Charlie Rose Brain Series. Dr. Kandel was interviewed by Jonah Lehrer, a Contributing Editor at Wired and author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

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