Author and journalist Blaine Harden speaks about his remarkable and harrowing account of refugee Shin Dong-hyuk’s birth into and eventual escape from the North Korean gulag. A monumental and moving book, Harden reveals the hardships of prison life and provides a lasting testimony to the endurance of the human spirit. This literary event features a special display of refugee artwork.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Book Cafe: Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
with
Blaine Harden
Author and Journalist
Blaine Harden is an author and journalist who reports for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist. He worked for The Washington Post as a correspondent in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine. His most recent book, Escape From Camp 14, is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have been born and raised in a North Korean prison camp—and to have escaped to the West. Blaine is also the author of A River Lost. It’s about well-intentioned Americans (including the author’s father) who dammed and degraded the West’s greatest river, the Columbia. An updated and revised edition of A River Lost will be published by Norton in April, 2012, to coincide with a PBS American Experienceprogram about Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia River. Blaine and the the book are featured on the program. Blaine’s first book, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, was described by The Independent (London) as the “best contemporary book on Africa.” Journalism awards include the Ernie Pyle Award for coverage of the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Nondeadline Writing (stories about Africa), and the Livingston Award for International Reporting (stories about Africa).
