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BOSTON FESTIVAL FUNDRAISER An Evening With Walter Isaacson May 20, 2012 at the MIT Media Lab

() The Boston Book Festival holds a very special fundraising event on Sunday, May 20 at 5:30 p.m. at the spectacular MIT Media Lab (75 Amherst St., Cambridge, Mass.). An Evening With Walter Isaacson will feature a cocktail reception, a presentation, and dinner with the Steve Jobs biographer. Tickets are $400 per person for the entire evening, or $75 per person for just the cocktail reception and presentation, and can be purchased at http://bit.ly/IBV8HQ . Sponsorship packages including tables are also available. For more information, visit www.bostonbookfest.org .

Walter Isaacson is the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute based in Washington, DC. He has been the chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of TIME magazine. He is the author of Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). Isaacson was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Harvard College and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He began his career at The Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times- Picayune/States-Item . He joined TIME in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor, and editor of new media before becoming the magazine’s 14 th editor in 1996. He became chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.

He is the chairman of the board of Teach for America, which recruits recent college graduates to teach in underserved communities. He was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other international broadcasts of the United States, a position he held until 2012. He is vice-chair of Partners for a New Beginning, a public-private group tasked with forging ties between the United States and the Muslim world. He is on the board of United Airlines, Tulane University, and the Overseers of Harvard University. From 2005-2007, after Hurricane Katrina, he was the vice-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He lives with his wife and daughter in Washington, DC.

The fourth annual Boston Book Festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012 in various Copley Square locations. Festival events will include presentations and panels featuring internationally-known writers, scholars, critics, and commentators; programming for children, teens, and families; writing workshops and competitions; outdoor booths; and poetry and music performances. Most events are FREE and open to the public. The featured authors, to be announced in the coming months, will represent a wide array of programming, and include award winners, best-selling authors, renowned scholars, children’s writers, and writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The Boston Book Festival is produced by the nonprofit organization of the same name, and is made possible with the generous support of individual donors and sponsors, including Presenting Partner 90.9 WBUR, Akamai, Other Press, and (blurb.com). For more information, visit www.bostonbookfest.org .

Boston Book Festival Partners include Mayor Thomas M. Menino; The Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism, and Special Events; The City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department; ReadBoston; Boston Public ; the Boston Athenæum; PEN New England; Grub Street; Trinity Church; Old South Church; Church of the Covenant; Boston Children’s Museum; Cambridge Public Library, New Center for Arts and Culture; 826 Boston; Brattle Theatre, Berklee College of Music; Emerson College; Harvard Book Store; Brookline Booksmith; Porter Square ; Wellesley Booksmith; Mass Poetry; and Independent Film Festival Boston.

Boston Book Festival Board of Directors : President Deborah Z. Porter; Treasurer Steve Oristaglio; Hannah Gilligan Commoss, Callie Crossley, Robert Duboff, Rona Kiley, Glenda Manzi, Jeff Mayersohn, Jackie McCabe, Nicholas Negroponte, Rose Styron, John Taylor “Ike” Williams. Honorary Advisory Board: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ann Gund, Steve Grossman, Arthur Golden, Phil Balboni, Amy Ryan, Diane Patrick, Tom Perrotta, Lou Casagrande.

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