April 10, 2003
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Sister Helen Prejean delivers the lecture Dead Man Walking—The Journey Continues at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- Sister Helen Prejean
- Author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book that became the hit movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn
- A three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize
- Dead Man Walking—The Journey Continues
- Presented as part of the series Executing Justice: America and the Death Penalty
- Friday, May 16
- 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- General public $10 / UCSB students $8
- Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sister Helen Prejean, a tireless fighter against capital punishment, will present the lecture Dead Man Walking—The Journey Continues on Friday, May 16 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Sister Prejean is best known for the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, which has been translated into ten different languages and remained on The New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Dead Man Walking provides “a gritty look at what really happens in the final hours of a death row inmate....Prejean takes readers to a place most will thankfully never know...adeptly probing the morality of a judicial system and a country that kills its citizens.” Author Bill McKibben went even further in his assessment of the book, asserting, “This arresting account should do for the debate over capital punishment what the film footage from Selma and Birmingham accomplished for the civil rights movement: turn abstractions into flesh and blood. Tough, fair, bravely alive—you will not come away from this book unshaken.”
In January 1996, Dead Man Walking was developed into a major motion picture directed and written by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Prejean and Sean Penn as a death row inmate. Sarandon won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal. The book was also the basis for a new opera with a libretto written by Terrance McNally and music composed by Jake Heggie that was premiered by the San Francisco Opera in October 2000.
Since beginning her crusade, the Roman Catholic sister has witnessed five executions in Louisiana and today educates the public about the death penalty by lecturing, organizing and writing. As the founder of “Survive,” a victim’s advocacy group in New Orleans, she continues to counsel not only inmates on death row, but the families of murder victims, as well. Sister Prejean served from 1985-1995 on the board of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and served as Chairperson of the Board from 1993-1995. She is the Honorary Chairperson of Moratorium Campaign, a group working towards a suspension of the death penalty at the state and national levels.
Sister Helen Prejean was born on April 21, 1938 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957 and received a B.A. in English and Education from St. Mary’s Dominican College, New Orleans in 1962. In 1973, she earned an M.A. in Religious Education from St. Paul’s University in Ottawa, Canada. She has been the Religious Education Director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans, the Formation Director for her religious community, and has taught junior and senior high school students.
Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Sister Helen Prejean will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
This evening is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures with the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life, and the UCSB Law and Society Program with support from the Critical Issues in America Program as part of the series Executing Justice: America and the Death Penalty.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.