The author of Reading Lolita in Tehran uses her life to transform the way we see the world and to "remind us of why we read in the first place."
Azar Nafisi is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, and a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children. www.azarnafisi.com Michael Silverblatt is the host and guiding spirit of KCRW's half-hour radio show "Bookworm," where he introduces listeners to new and emerging authors along with writers of renown. Silverblatt's formidable knowledge comes from close reading and analysis of a writer's entire oeuvre. Susan Sontag called him "a national treasure. A New York native, Silverblatt graduated from the State University of New York in Buffalo and later took advanced courses at Johns Hopkins. He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s where he worked in motion picture public relations and script development. He created "Bookworm" for KCRW-FM in 1989.