Contact: Fran Maas, President's Distinguished Lecture Series coordinator, (360) 650-7545, fran.maas@wwu.edu
BELLINGHAM - The Western Washington University President's Distinguished Lecture Series will host award-winning Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Robin Wright at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28 in the WWU Performing Arts Center (PAC). 
Wright will speak about "The Future of the Middle East," a region she has covered as a journalist for three decades. "The most daunting foreign policy challenge the U.S. faces over the next decade," she believes, "isn't just containing extremism, but channeling the enormous energy behind political change into peaceful directions."
Wright is a MacArthur Foundation grant recipient. Her 2008 book, the latest of five, is "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East," which The New York Times called "a fluent and intelligent look" at the region from Morocco to Iran from "one of the best informed American journalists" covering the region.
Wright has reported from more than 130 countries on six continents for the Post, Los Angeles Times, both the London Times and Guardian, CBS News, The Christian Science Monitor, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. In addition reporting from the Middle East, she spent seven years in Africa, and received the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for her war coverage there. Wright was also awarded the United Nations Correspondents Association Gold Medal for coverage of international affairs and the National Magazine Award for her coverage of Iran for New Yorker Magazine.
Tickets for Wright's lecture will be available beginning Tuesday, Oct. 1. Check http://www.lectureseires.wwu.edu/ for ticket availability.
The President's Distinguished Lecture Series lectures are held in Western's PAC Mainstage. Free parking is located in the C lots and Lot12A, near Fairhaven College. Free shuttle vans will make continuous trips to and from the PAC beginning at 5:30 p.m. from Lot 12A. The shuttles will make return trips to the parking lot after the lecture.
The President's Distinguished Lecture Series offers a community forum in which prominent speakers foster and encourage creative thought. The lectures are designed to enhance understanding and vision, to challenge prevailing modes of thought and to expand our range of interests.
Lectures are free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available at the WWU Box Office, located in Western's Performing Arts Center. Tickets are available via e-mail, pdls@wwu.edu, in person, via phone (360) 650-6146 or fax (360) 650-7955. The WWU Box Office is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Ticket orders will be held at the Box Office "will call" for pick-up, before or on the evening of the lecture.
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