Crain Lectures to Feature Vincent Laforet, Anne Garrels

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet and National Public Radio senior foreign correspondent Anne Garrels will present the next Crain Lectures at Northwestern University on Monday, May 12, and Monday, May 19, respectively.

Both events will be held in the McCormick Tribune Center Forum, 1870 Campus Drive, on Northwestern's Evanston campus. The May 12 presentation – "An Afternoon with Vincent Laforet" -- will begin at 4 p.m. Garrels' May 19 presentation on "Reporting Iraq" will take place at noon. They are free and open to the public.

Laforet, now a New York-based commercial and editorial photographer, still regularly is published in The New York Times. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, Laforet was named one of the "100 Most Influential People in Photography" and has exhibited photographs internationally.

Laforet's work has been published in major publications around the world as well as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek and Life. He was one of a team of New York Times photographers awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for post-9/11 overseas coverage.

NPR's Garrels spent years in Iraq, covering the country under Saddam Hussein, through the U.S. invasion and after. She earned international recognition in 2003 as one of 16 American journalists to remain in Baghdad during the initial phase of the war.

Since Sept. 11, Garrels also has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. She is the author of "Naked in Baghdad" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), that chronicles her experiences as a correspondent in the Iraqi capital. Her work in Iraq has earned her the George Polk Award, the 2004 Edward R. Murrow Award and numerous other honors.

The popular, admission-free Crain Lecture Series is named in honor of magazine publishers Gertrude and G.D. Crain Jr. and presented by Northwestern's Medill. For further information about the upcoming lecture, call (847) 491-5401 or visit http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/about/conferenceslectures.aspx.