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Roya Hakakian Will Deliver 2023 Atlas Week Signature Symposium Keynote Address

04/04/2023

Roya Hakakian, an Iranian-American journalist and writer, will be the 2023 Atlas Week Signature Symposium Speaker.

The Atlas Week Signature Symposium is presented by internationally renowned speakers who have dedicated their lives to issues of political and social justice. Hakakian will be speaking on Thursday, April 20, at 5:30 p.m. in the Center for Global Citizenship. Register for the Atlas Week Signature Symposium by filling out the Google form. 

Roya Hakakian. Photo submitted. 

Roya Hakakian. Photo submitted.

Hakakian's opinion columns, essays and book reviews appear in leading English language publications including the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic. A founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, she has spoken on a variety of news outlets, from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS to MSNBC, as well as in Washington D.C. for the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and the State Department with US Secretary Antony Blinken. 

Her latest book, "A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious" has been called a contemporary Tocquevillian account by The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship among many other prizes and has been called one of “the most important activists, academics and journalists of her generation." In 2014, the US Federal Bar Association created a prize for the first time in 100 years to honor the leading prosecutor she features in her book.

Hakakian's memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, "Journey from the  Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran," was a Barnes and Noble's Pick of  the Week, a Ms. Magazine’s Must Read of the Summer, a Publishers Weekly's Best Book of the  Year, an Elle Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2004, was named Best Memoir by the  Connecticut Center for the Book in 2005 and has been a favorite of colleges as a “Freshman  Experience” read.

Hakakian will be speaking on Thursday, April 20 at 5:30 p.m. in the Center for Global Citizenship. Register for the Atlas Week Signature Symposium by filling out the Google form.

For more information, visit the Atlas webpage.