The UND Writer's Conference will celebrate the school's 125th anniversary by bringing to campus one of the biggest names in the conference's history.
Salman Rushdie, Booker prize-winning author of "Midnight's Children," "The Satanic Verses" and many other novels, stories and essays will be on campus in March to participate in the conference.
Accusations of blasphemy against Islam in Rushdie's fourth novel, "The Satanic Verses," published in 1988, led the Iranian government to issue a fatwa, or death sentence, against him, and he spent several years in hiding.
Rushdie will answer audience questions on his writing and other issues during a March 25 event.
UND special events coordinator Dawn Botsford said UND will encourage students, staff and community members to all read the same Rushdie work. She said that work probably will be "Midnight's Children," Rushdie's second novel, which was named the best British novel of the past 25 years in 1993 by the Booker Prize committee.
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The book deals with the years following Indian and Pakistani independence from Great Britain in 1947.
Rushdie was born in 1947 in Bombay, India, and was educated in India and England.
