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�������� program hosts the final event in its “” series with author and Creative Writing Professor Salar Abdoh speaking about his latest novel “” in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist on Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 6:30 p.m. in CCNY’s Shepard Hall, room 350. . 
 
A New York Times Editor's Choice selection and Best Book of the Year by “Publishers Weekly,” “Out of Mesopotamia” is informed by Abdoh’s firsthand experience on the battlefronts of Iraq and Syria. It captures the horror, confusion, and absurdity of combat from a seldom-glimpsed perspective that expands our understanding of the war novel. The story depicts Saleh, a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows, but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. 

Abdoh’s forthcoming book, “When a Woman Burns Herself,” is due out in September 2023. His previous books include “The Poet Game,” “Opium” and “Tehran at Twilight,” and he edited and translated “Tehran Noir.” 

Cultural critic and author Chris Hedges was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans for 15 years for “The New York Times.” A member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for “The New York Times’” coverage of global terrorism, he also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. He is host of the Emmy Award¬-nominated RT America show “On Contact.” Hedges holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University, and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He has been teaching college credit courses through Rutgers University in the NJ prison system since 2013.
 
The “Spotlight: Writers on Iran” series has featured award-winning novelists and academics , and , all of whose most recent works will be available for purchase at this event. 

“Spotlight” is an ongoing series presented by CCNY’s Division of Humanities and the Arts and the MFA in Creative Writing which engages public figures in the most pressing conversations of our time, through the lens of literature and the arts. 
 
For more information, contact Stewart Sinclair at ssinclair@ccny.cuny.edu

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