Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Anne Applebaum to visit Ketchum

Pulitzer Prize-winning author is first Gary Hunt Memorial Writer in Residence


By SABINA DANA PLASSE
Express Staff Writer

Anne Applebaum is the first Gary Hunt Memorial 2009 Writer in Residence.

Keeping the spirit of Iconoclast Book's Gary Hunt alive and well, Anne Applebaum is the first Gary Hunt Memorial Writer in Residence and will visit Ketchum for several days as the guest of the men's book club Words, Wine, Port and Cheese Literary Society.

"Gary was a very important part of our book club," said book club member Bob Kaplan. "The best way to perpetuate his name and honor him was to create a memorial in his name and give back to the community. Every year we will sponsor an author. Anne was picked as the first writer in residence."

Kaplan said there is no fixed agenda and Applebaum will meet with the book club and area high schoolers. She will also give a free lecture and open conversation with Van Gordon Sauter, with Q & A to follow, at the Community Library in Ketchum on Thursday, April 2, at 6 p.m.

Applebaum lives with her family in Poland. Her husband, Radoslaw Sikorski, is a politician and writer. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Gulag: A History."

"Gulag" was published in 2003 and won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2004. The book narrates the history of the Soviet concentration camps and describes daily life there, making extensive use of recently opened Russian archives as well as memoirs and interviews. The book has appeared in more than two dozen translations, including all major European languages.

Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and she writes for a range of other newspapers and magazines, including The New York Review of Books. Formerly a member of The Washington Post editorial board, she has also worked as foreign and deputy editor of The Spectator magazine in London, and as a columnist at several British newspapers, including the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs and the Evening Standard.

From 1988-1991 she covered the collapse of Communism as Warsaw correspondent of The Economist magazine. Her first book, "Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe," described a journey through Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, then on the verge of independence.

"I met Gary at Boise State and my husband and I spent a couple of days with him," Applebaum said. "Bob Kaplan asked me to do this in Gary's memory. Gary was such a powerful person. It is hard to believe he is no longer here."

Applebaum will discuss among other issues the current state of affairs in Russia, how the country no longer has free press or television and the government controls everything. She said there is no more independence.

"It is as much of an authoritarian government than 10 years ago," Applebaum said. "The issue about what role Russia will play in the global economy in the next two years is important, especially if the price of oil remains low. A piece of the puzzle is the way the Obama administration will deal with threats to its allies from Russia and whether Russia will be integrated into the global economy."

Applebaum suggested that to stay current on global economics, people should read newspapers rather than watch television news. She is an avid reader of The Washington Post and The New York Times.

"I do not get my news from television," Applebaum said. "I read The Economist, and on the Internet there are lots of blogs and news sites for anyone interested in world news. I also read Russian newspapers, in English."

Applebaum is working on a new book on the Stalinization of post-war Central Europe.

Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com




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