Thursday, April 11, 5:30 p.m.
Davenport RiverCenter, 136 East Third Street, Davenport IA
For the second year in a row, the Quad Cities' NPR station WVIK hosts a special panel discussion and keynote address in its “Intelligent Conversation” series, with this year's April 11 program A Path Appears: An Intelligent Conversation About Real People Working to Change the World taking place at Davenport's RiverCenter and boasting two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times' very first blogger and subject of Ben Affleck's HBO documentary Reporter.
Kristof began his career backpacking in Africa and Asia, writing articles to cover his expenses, and he has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries. During his travels, Kristof has caught malaria, experienced wars, confronted warlords, encountered an Indonesian mob carrying heads on pikes, and survived an African airplane crash – and won two Pulitzers in the process for his journalistic endeavors and advocacy of human rights.
In 1990, Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, then also a New York Times journalist, became the first husband-wife team to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, earning it for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Kristof won his second Pulitzer in 2006 for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." Kristof and WuDunn have also written four best-selling books: China Wakes, Thunder from the East, Half the Sky, and A Path Appears, the latter two of which inspired a prime-time PBS documentary series. Archbishop Desmond Tutu dubbed Kristof as "an honorary African" for his reporting on conflicts there, and President Bill Clinton said: “There is no one in journalism, anywhere in the United States at least, who has done anything like the work he has done to figure out how poor people are actually living around the world, and what their potential is.”
Prior to Kristof's RiverCenter address, A Path Appears will present a panel discussion moderated by the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce's Greg Aguilar, director of the Q2030 Regional Action Plan. Included in this year's panel are: Sister Bobbi Bussan, Retreat Director for Benet House; Nicole Cisne Durbin, a licensed clinical professional counselor with Family Resources; Dr. Kit Evans-Ford, the founder of Argow's House of Hope and Healing and the action outreach organizer for Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service; and Dr. Majdi Omar, a pediatrician with Quad Cities Pediatrics, P.C. And member of the Syrian American Medical Society.
A Path Appears: An Intelligent Conversation About Real People Working to Change the World will begin on April 11 with 5:30 p.m. appetizers, followed by the 6:30 p.m. panel discussion and Nicholas Kristof's 7:30 p.m. keynote address. Admission to the event is $20-37, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)764-7507 or visiting WVIK.org.
