Citizen Artist: Salman Rushdie Receives 2015 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize

Salman Rushdie is a global exemplar of artist as citizen. Beloved for his brilliant fiction, Rushdie has helped define the literary canon with his classics "Midnight’s Children" and "Shame." Author most recently of "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights," he embodies the power and reverberations of the written word – personally and politically – more clearly than any living writer. In response to Rushdie’s novel "The Satanic Verses," the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on the writer’s life. Living under threat of death for years, Rushdie has emerged as an outspoken advocate for the freedom of expression. In honoring him with its literary award, presented previously to icons from Arthur Miller and August Wilson to Joyce Carol Oates and Patti Smith, the Chicago Tribune recognizes not only great literary achievement but also the transformative power of the written word. Rushdie will be joined in conversation by Bruce Dold, editor of the Chicago Tribune editorial page.