November 29, 2005

UCSB Arts & Lectures presents acclaimed author Mark Salzman in an on-stage conversation with writer Pico Iyer at Victoria Hall Theater

Summary Facts:

• Mark Salzman
• In conversation with Pico Iyer
• Mark Salzman is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, cellist and martial artist
• His works include True Notebooks and Iron & Silk
• Thursday, January 12
• 8 pm / Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria Street
• General public $10 / UCSB students $8
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535

Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, cellist and martial artist Mark Salzman will discuss his work with esteemed author Pico Iyer (The Global Soul) on Thursday, January 12 at 8 pm at Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria Street, Santa Barbara. Salzman, noted for his lyrical style, gut-wrenching honesty and great sense of humor, is the author of several books including the bestseller Iron & Silk, which received the Christopher Award as a work that “affirms the highest values of the human spirit.” Salzman then wrote the screenplay for, and starred in, the critically acclaimed film version of Iron & Silk, which was shot entirely on location in China. New York magazine writes, “The concreteness and economy of Salzman’s writing, his eye and ear for tiny resonant details eventually yield their riches in a clear-eyed vision.”

Mark Salzman’s most recent work True Notebooks—A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall is a fascinating nonfiction account of his experiences as a writing teacher at Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage offenders. Salzman not only struggles with teaching prisoners sentenced for 15-30 years and guilty of terrible crimes, but also fights his own prejudices about criminals, his greater worries that making these hardened men more vulnerable and truthful might endanger their lives in the dangerous prison system. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, wrote, “I devoured this book....Insightful and poignant and funny....It’s all soft underbelly in these pages, human beings at their best against great odds, searching for redemption.”

His 2001 novel Lying Awake about a Carmelite nun in a monastery outside present-day Los Angeles brings to life the mysterious world of the cloister, giving us a brilliantly realized portrait of women drawn to the rigors of an ancient religious life, and of one woman’s trial at the perilous intersection of faith and reason. The Los Angeles Times raved, “Mark Salzman is...a poet, capturing in the pages of Lying Awake, his shining novel about devotion and doubt, a mysticism that reaches back in time to an older tradition, yet dwells easily in the present.” Common to each of his works (including Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, and the novels The Laughing Sutra and The Soloist) is the theme of how people struggle to reach an ideal but often fall short, and the quiet change that takes place in facing the discouragement and the possibility of never achieving their goal.

As a boy, all Salzman ever wanted was to be a Kung Fu master. It was his proficiency on the cello, however, that facilitated his acceptance to Yale at the age of 16. He soon changed his major to Chinese language and philosophy, eventually leading him to travel to mainland China, where he spent two years teaching English at Hunan Medical College and studying traditional martial arts at their source. In 1985, he was the only non-Chinese invited to participate in the National Martial Arts Competition in Tianjin. Salzman’s cello playing appears on the soundtrack to several films, including the Academy Award-winning documentary Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien, directed by Salzman’s wife Jessica Yu (who presented her film In the Realms of the Unreal at UCSB Campbell Hall in winter 2005). In 1996, Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax invited Mark Salzman to join them as guest cellist for part of their Valentine’s Day chamber music program at Alice Tully Hall, which was broadcast nationally on the television program Live from Lincoln Center.

Pico Iyer, a part-time Santa Barbara resident, is the author of eight books including Abandon, Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home, Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk. Salon.com has insisted “with extraordinary empathy and insight, Iyer shows how cultures collide...how a dance of dreams and desires and preconceptions ensues every time a visitor and a local meet.” In 1995 the Utne Reader named Pico Iyer one of the 100 “writers who could change your life.”

Pico Iyer describes himself as a “global village on two legs.” He was born in England to Indian parents, migrated to California as a boy, studied at Eton and Oxford, and currently splits his time between Japan and Santa Barbara. He also ventures throughout the world, and has made travel writing a philosophical adventure. His most recent book Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign is an insightful exploration of not only why we travel but also how travel affords us the opportunity to journey into ourselves.

Courtesy of Borders, books by Mark Salzman and Pico Iyer will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

This event is presented by the UCSB Arts & Lectures. Tickets for the event are $10 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students, who must show valid ID when purchasing tickets and at the door. Ticket prices are subject to convenience fees. Tickets are on sale now and can also be purchased at the door, if still available.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.