Berry College will host New York Times best-selling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon at 7 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 11) in the Cage Center as part of the Conson Wilson Lecture Series. This event is free and open to the public.
Lemmon is the author of "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana," which tells the story of Kamila Sidiqi , an Afghanistan woman living under Taliban rule in Kabul. Desperate to support her family and banished from the streets by the Taliban, she started a dressmaking business in her living room which offered work to 100 women in her neighborhood. "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana" was the required summer reading book for first-year students at Berry.
Lemmon is also the deputy director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Women and Foreign Policy program. Prior to joining the Council, Lemmon covered public policy and emerging markets for the global investment firm PIMCO, after working for nearly a decade as a journalist with the ABC News Political Unit and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." She has reported on entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict regions for the Financial Times, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, the Daily Beast, and Christian Science Monitor, along with Ms. Magazine, Bloomberg, Politico and the Huffington Post.
First-year students received a copy of "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana" at Berry's Student Orientation Advising and Registration. Students discussed the book and explored the issues it raised with each other, their advisors and first-year mentors.
The Conson Wilson Lecture Series continues to host the author of the required summer reading book for first-year students. Previous writers include Paul Rusesabagina, whose autobiography inspired the film "Hotel Rwanda."
For more information about Lemmon, visit her website at www.gaylelemmon.com.
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Written by Student Public Relations Assistant Hayden Sloan