05 Jun The Price of Truth: Reading Books in a Police State
Eugene Yelchin (Award-winning children’s writer and illustrator)
Wednesday, June 5 / 4:00 PM
Old Little Theater
Award-winning children’s writer and illustrator Eugene Yelchin will speak about the dramatic role reading played in the Soviet Union, the courage of writers and their readers, and how the struggle for truth under an oppressive government shaped Eugene Yelchin’s writing in the United States. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Eugene Yelchin became a persona non grata before emigrating to the United States. He currently resides in Los Angeles. He recently won the prestigious Newbery Award for 2012 for his children’s book Breaking Stalin’s Nose, which is making a stir in Russia in its Russian translation. It confronts the legacy of Stalinism through the perspective of a young boy and would-be Young Pioneer whose father is arrested and disappears, challenging his son’s assumptions about the world. Yelchin also won the Tomie DePaola illustration award in 2006. His picture books include Won-Ton, which was named an American Library Association Notable Book in 2011 and The Rooster Prince of Breslov, which received the National Jewish Book award in 2010.
Sponsored by College of Creative Studies Literature Symposium, Comparative Literature Program, Translation Studies Emphasis, the Dept. of the History of Art and Architecture, the Dept. of Communication, the Dept. of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies, and the IHC.