The Idaho Humanities Council is bringing best-selling author Sara Paretsky to Coeur d’Alene for the 7th Annual Northern Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture and Dinner. The event includes dinner, lecture, Q & A period, and book signing. A special reception for Benefactors to meet with the author prior to the dinner will be held at a private home. Paretsky will explore in her talk the theme “Truth, Lies, and Duct Tape: Writing in an Age of Silence,” based on the title essay of her 2007 best-selling collection of essays.

The event will begin with a no-host reception at 6:00 pm at the Coeur d’Alene Resort. Dinner will begin at 7 p.m., with Paretsky’s talk to follow. Borders Books will be facilitating book sales and a book signing after the lecture.

There are two ticket levels. The general ticket ($45) includes admission to the dinner and lecture. The Benefactor ticket ($100) includes admission to and preferential seating at the dinner and lecture, and access to a private reception with Paretsky in a local home prior to the event. Tickets are available by calling 888-345-5346 or by CLICKING HERE.

Author and editor of more than 20 books, Paretsky is perhaps best known for her series of novels featuring private detective V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 when she introduced her detective in Indemnity Only. By creating a female investigator who uses her wits as well as her fists, Paretsky challenged a genre in which women typically were either vamps or victims. Hailed by critics and readers, Indemnity Only was followed by a dozen more best-selling Warshawski novels.

In addition to her popular V.I. Warshawski series, Paretsky has written two highly-acclaimed stand-alone novels, Ghost Country and Bleeding Kansas, the latter set in the part of rural Kansas where Paretsky grew up.  She also has published a collection of her own short stories, and edited four other anthologies, including, most recently, Sisters on the Case.

In her collection of essays Writing in an Age of Silence, Paretsky explores the traditions of political and literary dissent that have informed her life and work, against the repression of free speech and thought in the U.S. today. In tracing the writer’s difficult journey from silence to speech, she turns to her own childhood and youth in rural Kansas, and brilliantly evokes Chicago in the 1960s from her arrival during the civil rights struggles, to her most extraordinary literary creation, V.I. Warshawski. Writing in an Age of Silence was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

In her talk in Coeur d’Alene, Paretsky will discuss issues regarding freedom of speech, the Patriot Act, historical limitations on speech and their controversial results, as well as those who defend freedom of speech (librarians, supporters of the humanities, etc.).

Born in Iowa in 1947 and raised in Kansas, Paretsky went to Chicago in 1968 to do community service work under the direction of Dr. Martin Luther King. She holds both a Ph.D. in history and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

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