Journalist, author Nazario to open E.N. Thompson series

Acclaimed journalist and author Sonia Nazario will share the story of a Honduran boy’s struggle to find his mother in the United States in “Enrique’s Journey and America’s Immigration Dilemma” at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 27 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.

The event is the opening lecture in the 2016-17 E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues and the Humanities Nebraska Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities.

Nazario will draw from her bestselling book, “Enrique’s Journey,” which was originally published in the Los Angeles Times and won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2003, among numerous other awards. With 2016 marking the centennial of the Pulitzer Prizes, she will also offer her thoughts on the Pulitzer’s place in American literary life and how winning the award has affected her career.

Nazario spent 20 years reporting about social issues for newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the Times. Her stories have tackled some of America’s most challenging problems, including hunger, drug addiction and immigration.

A graduate of Williams College with a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley, Nazario began her career as the youngest writer to be hired by the Wall Street Journal. She has been named among the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business magazine and a trendsetter by Hispanic Magazine. Her humanitarian efforts led to her selection as the Don and Arvonne Fraser Human Rights Award recipient from the Advocates for Human Rights in 2015.

David Zaritzky Brown, managing partner of Brown Immigration Law in Lincoln, will give the pre-talk “The Immigration Dilemma: Examining Our Broken System and How We Fix It” at 7 p.m. in the Lied Center’s Steinhart Room.

Brown has more than 18 years of U.S. and Canadian immigration law experience, including stints in Toronto and Silicon Valley. His firm, founded in 2006, focuses on U.S. business immigration matters and supports clients with global immigration needs. He has represented leading companies in industries such as graphic arts, special effects, high tech, health care, biopharmaceutical, scientific instruments, consulting and financial services, as well as many startups. He also experienced the U.S. immigration system firsthand as a Canadian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 2008.

“Although we are not a border state, immigration has a huge impact on this state in many ways,” Brown said. “We’ve seen it in our ag community, where many farmers depend on immigrant workers, and we’re seeing it now in the Silicon Prairie. Nazario’s talk is a reminder that this is a human issue that involves complex political, economic and cultural issues.”

This year’s E.N. Thompson series, “Crossing Borders,” will explore the relevance of borders in the modern world – how they define people and, increasingly, the ways in which people ignore them in the interest of commerce, education and personal freedom.

New York Times op-ed columnist and author David Brooks will deliver the lecture “It’s Better Than It Looks: Election 2016” at 7 p.m. Oct. 4. Investigative science journalist and author Sonia Shah will close the series with “Pandemic: From Cholera to Ebola and Beyond” at 7 p.m. Nov. 9. A pre-talk will take place 30 minutes before both lectures in the Steinhart Room.

Free tickets are available from the Lied Center for Performing Arts. To order, click here or call the ticket office at 402-472-4747. Forums are general admission events; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Lectures are streamed here and are available live on Lincoln Time Warner Cable digital channel 80 and/or channel 5, channel 71.16 without a cable box, UNL campus channel 4 and KRNU radio 90.3 FM. All lectures are interpreted for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, The Lied Center for Performing Arts and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was established in 1988 with the purpose of bringing a diversity of viewpoints on international and public policy issues to the university and people of Nebraska to promote understanding and encourage debate.

The Office of Academic Success and Intercultural Services is sponsoring Nazario’s lecture.