TACOMA, Wash. – Leonard Pitts Jr., the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose thoughtful and at times provocative column is syndicated in newspapers across the country, will speak at University of Puget Sound on Tuesday, Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. The African American writer and radio producer will appear at Schneebeck Concert Hall for a lecture titled “An Evening with Leonard Pitts Jr.” General admission is $8. For Puget Sound campus members, entrance is $4. Ticket information is below.

Twice each week millions of newspaper readers around the country read the Maryland-based columnist’s views as he covers issues ranging from teachers unions, to citizen journalists, to the “gospel of unadulterated hate.” His response to the Sept. 11 attacks on America—an angry and defiant open letter to the terrorists—circulated the globe via the Internet, generated some 30,000 e-mail messages, and has since been set to music, reprinted in poster form, and read on television.

In June 2007 Pitts was confronted with death threats by angry neo-Nazis at a column he wrote about a white couple who were raped and murdered by five black assailants in Knoxville, Tenn. His column described the event as a tragedy and attacked the “crackpots, incendiaries, and flat-out racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand.”

Pitts, awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, also was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and has earned many other recognitions from his peers and the public. His most recent book and first novel is Before I Forget, a story about a former rhythm and blues star who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and who is desperate to make peace with his father and his son, before it is too late. Pitts is also author of the best-selling Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood, and his columns have been collected in the volume Forward From this Moment.

Pitts has been writing professionally since 1976 when, as an 18-year-old college student, he began doing freelance reviews for Soul, a national black entertainment tabloid. Two years later he was its editor. In the years since, Pitts' work has appeared in publications including Musician, Spin, Reader's Digest, and Parenting. He wrote and produced Who We Are, an award-winning, 1988 radio documentary on the history of black America, and has produced radio programs on Madonna and Martin Luther King Jr.

Tickets for Leonard Pitts Jr. can be ordered by phoning 253.879.3419 or they can be picked up from the Information Center in Wheelock Student Center.

For directions and a map of the campus: www.pugetsound.edu/directions.xml

Print-quality photos of Leonard Pitts Jr. are available at  Press Photos - University of Puget Sound.

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