The Bryan Series®

Khaled Hosseini to Open Sold-Out Bryan Series Oct. 24

Best-selling author Khaled Hosseini will open this year’s Bryan Series with a talk at War Memorial Auditorium Friday, Oct. 24, at 7:30 p.m.  The event is sold out on a subscription basis, with no single-event tickets available to the public.

Hosseini, a native of Afghanistan, is the author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. In 2006, he was named a goodwill envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Beverley Abel, a producer for North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, will moderate the program. She joined the station as an on-air announcer in 1995 after spending a decade producing documentaries for British television. Abel was a producer of "The State of Things" public affairs program when it was launched and has won several awards for her work, including a Gracie Allen Award, Community Broadcasters Silver Reel and an Edward R. Murrow Award.

The Bryan Series continues with CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour and James Rubin, a state department official during the Clinton Administration, on Tuesday, Nov. 18. Booker Prize-winning novelist Salman Rushdie will speak Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009, and author and journalist Anna Quindlen on Tuesday, April 14.

In addition to the Greensboro-based events, the series will present a bonus program featuring chef Anthony Bourdain at the new Durham Performing Arts Center Thursday, Feb. 19, at 7:30 p.m.

Opening Bryan Series Program Featuring Khaled Hosseini Moved to Oct. 24

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, will speak Friday, Oct. 24, in the opening program in next year's Bryan Series. The program was originally scheduled Tuesday, Oct. 14. The event will be at 7:30 p.m. at War Memorial Auditorium.

The series, with a theme of "Thinking Globally," will also include programs featuring "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert Tuesday, Nov. 18, author and activist Salman Rushdie Tuesday, Feb. 10, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlen Tuesday, April 14.

Season passes are on sale at the Greensboro Coliseum Advance Box Office, online at http://www.guilford.edu/bryanseries or by calling 336-218-5550. Passes for new subscribers are $80. Single-event tickets are scheduled to go on sale in September.

Hosseini, Russert are Among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People

2008-09 Bryan Series speakers Khaled Hosseini and Tim Russert are on Time’s fifth annual list of the world’s most influential people.  The magazine published the list in its May 12 issue.  Hosseini opens the series Oct. 24 and Russert appears Nov. 18.

In describing the selections for the Time 100, editors stated that “Influence is hard to measure, and what we look for is people whose ideas, whose example, whose talent, whose discoveries transform the world we live in.”

First Lady Laura Bush, who wrote Hosseini’s profile, said, “Not many people write successful first novels. Still fewer are able to change the world with their writing. Khaled Hosseini has done both.”

Bush added:  “Hosseini’s writing has invited many to look beyond the post-9/11 stereotypes about his birth country. We have grown to see Afghanistan as a land of men and women, each with their own hopes and longings for love.”

 Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said of Russert, “Every Sunday, more than 4 million Americans tune in to Meet the Press seeking help in trying to understand the issues and the candidates. They choose that program because Tim Russert is among the most astute, discerning and relentless pursuers of truth in the nation, and has been for years.”

Cuomo added:  “His extraordinary success is more than enough to make him respected, but he adds to that a genuineness as a human being that makes him as easy to like as he is to admire.”

George Mitchell, who spoke in the Bryan Series in February 2004, was also among the Time 100 this year.

For more information, visit http://www.time.com.