CALLING ALL ISLANDERS. TONIGHT, BE THERE.

At UVic, "a special public lecture from 7 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, October 19, in room A240, Human & Social Development building."

Journalist and author Terry Glavin—the University of Victoria’s fifth Harvey Stevenson Southam Lecturer in Journalism and Nonfiction—is sharing his personal experiences with Afghanistan and a shifting media landscape with UVic students this year.

Glavin’s lecture and discussion course, “Orwell and Everything After,” explores what he deems “a disorienting time of social, geopolitical and economic upheaval”—but far from describing the era of George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), he’s actually referring to the world today.

“Today’s revolutionary transition from analog to digital media is as epochal to the way we communicate ideas, stories and report ‘news’ as yesterday’s transition from an oral to a written-word culture,” explains Glavin. “But what has endured is our continuing evolution as a species that comprehends and explains the world through narrative . . . what also appears likely to endure is the value most people place on true stories.”

His latest book, Come From The Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan (Douglas & McIntyre), reflects his disturbing observations in that war-torn country. “In my own working life, I have never encountered such a deep and dark gulf between the real world and the way that country—and the war there—appears in the media.” Glavin will launch Come From The Shadows at a special public lecture from 7 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, October 19, in room A240 of UVic’s Human & Social Development building.

Terry Glavin has been hailed as “one of the finest journalists writing anywhere in the English language.” The author of six books and co-author of four others, he has been a reporter, editor and columnist for the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail; his cultural criticism, science and travel writing have appeared in magazines across the country, and he has won more than a dozen literary and journalism awards, including the 2009 Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence in BC. Glavin is also a co-founder of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee and the National Post called him “one of Canada’s leading voices in support of our Afghanistan campaign.”

The annual Harvey Stevenson Southam lectureship is made possible by a $250,000 gift from one of the country’s leading publishing families. Harvey Southam, a UVic alumnus and journalist, was heir to his family’s publishing empire when he died suddenly in 1991.