7pm
Azar Nafisi

The 2017 Lewisburg Literary Festival is pleased to feature Azar Nifisi, an enthusiastic crusader for books and literature, as the festival's main speaker.
     Nafisi writes non-fiction about fiction. She is best known for her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, which remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 117 weeks and has been translated into 32 languages. In the book she details her courageous efforts to teach forbidden Western classics during the Iranian Revolution. She was expelled from the faculty of the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory veil.
     A resident of Washington, D.C., and an American citizen since 2008, Dr. Nafisi has lectured at Oxford University and written for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. She is currently a Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Policy Institute. She is the recipient of numerous literary and humanitarian awards, and five honorary doctorates.
     Local writer Greg Johnson, Program Chair for the festival, notes, "Dr. Nafisi is a true world citizen and a passionate voice for the lasting value of books and literature. We're thrilled to bring her to the Greenbrier Valley. She's a departure from the speakers we've featured in the past, but as an Iranian American immigrant, and a believer of the power of literature in the world, we thought she might have some interesting observations to offer on any number of current topics."
     Dr. Nafisi's most recent book is entitled The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books. Using The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Babbit and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, she explores American cultures and values.
     Laura Miller of Salon wrote that "No one writes better or more stirringly about the way books shape a reader’s identity, and about the way that talking about books with good friends becomes integral to how we understand the books, our friends and ourselves than Azar Nafisi."

1pm
Morgan Spurlock

Morgan Spurlock is an award-winning and Academy Award-nominated writer, director and producer and CEO & founder of full-service New York-based production studio Warrior Poets. His first film, SUPER SIZE ME, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004, winning Best Directing honors. The film went on to win the inaugural Writers Guild of America Best Documentary Screenplay award as well as garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary. Since then he has directed, produced and distributed multiple film, television and digital projects.
     Spurlock recently directed and produced the documentary RATS, inspired by Robert Sullivan’s New York Times bestselling book, and served as Executive Producer of THE PISTOL SHRIMPS, VLOGUMENTARY, and the Oscar shortlisted feature documentary THE EAGLE HUNTRESS. He is currently co-writing, directing and producing the untitled film about Hollywood Superagent Sue Mengers based on Brian Kellow’s bestselling biography Can I Go Now: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s Superagent. In December, Spurlock’s company Warrior Poets announced a partnership with Indiegogo to help produce crowdfunded films, starting with the feature length doc WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS.
     In addition to his film and television work, Spurlock has been on the forefront of digital content creation as Warrior Poets led Hulu’s push into original programming with their first series, “A Day in the Life”, and helped ignite Yahoo’s original content strategy producing three separate series over the last few years, including “Failure Club”, MANSOME and “Losing it with John Stamos”. More recent digital projects include “Connected”, the first long-form series for AOL, and SMARTISH, an upcoming premium branded content channel for Maker.tv (Maker Studios).
   Spurlock is also a co-founder of the short-film content marketing studio Cinelan where he recently produced the groundbreaking series “WE THE ECONOMY: 20 Short Films You Can’t Afford to Miss.”

3PM
Greenbrier Valley Theatre

Presented By

FREE (Call 888-716-5082 to reserve tickets)

Capote's apartment, 1975. An excerpt from Capote's book Answered Prayers has just been published, but when his friends see themselves in his work their sense of betrayal leads them to desert him. Alone, Capote contemplates his life and what might lie in his future. Produced in partnership with the Lewisburg Literary Festival.

This event is free & open to the public. Seating is limited. Tickets are available at the Greenbrier County CVB by phone at 888-716-5082 or in person at 905 Washington Street West in Lewisburg.