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Roxana Saberi appears at Bismarck State College

Presented by Bismarck State College at Bismarck State College's Sidney J. Lee Auditorium

April 20, 2010

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Roxana Saberi, abducted journalist accused of spying in Iran, speaks April 20 at Bismarck State College about her 100-day ordeal as a political prisoner and her recently published book. Since her release from Tehran’s Evin Prison on May 11, 2009, Saberi has written a memoir about her experience, “Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran,” published by HarperCollins. Her reading-lecture presentation and book signing takes place at 7:30 p.m. in Sidney J. Lee Auditorium as part of ArtsQuest, BSC’s month-long celebration of the arts. The event is held in collaboration with BSC Campus Read and funded in part by the North Dakota Humanities Council. The Iranian-American Saberi writes movingly about the abduction from her home by Iranian intelligence agents on Jan. 31, 2009, her subsequent confinement, trial and 8-year sentence for alleged espionage, and her release in the face of international outrage and criticism from the Obama administration. The book also sheds new light on the inner workings of the Iranian government and the intensified restrictions on basic freedoms imposed since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005. Raised in Fargo, Saberi graduated from Concordia College in 1997 with degrees in communications and French. She was selected Miss North Dakota in 1997, and subsequently was named a Top 10 finalist and winner of the Scholar Award in the Miss America Pageant. Saberi holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in international relations from Cambridge University. A freelance journalist, Saberi arrived in Iran in 2003 to open a bureau for the independent broadcast news agency, Feature Story News. She distributed her reports to broadcasters around the world and made occasional contributions to National Public Radio, ABC radio, BBC and Fox News. She was doing research for a book at the time of her arrest. In October 2009, the film she co-wrote took top honors at the Middle East International Film Festival. “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” an Iranian film about struggling rock starts, won the Black Pearl Award for Audience Choice.