12:30-1:30 pm

Location: The Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Interview, Q&A, book signing

In Advance: $12 (First Person Arts members) / $15 (general public) - $15/$20 after 10/25

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Bestselling author, filmmaker and journalist Mark Bowden, “a master of narrative journalism,” (The New York Times Book Review) sits down with Dan Sipe to discuss his life’s work as a creator of spellbinding stories about epic events. Go behind the scenes with Bowden as he investigates a high-profile news story and learn how he transforms it into a thrilling narrative.

Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Bowden also worked on the screenplay for the film adaptation, directed by Ridley Scott. He has written a dozen books, including Killing Pablo (about the hunt for drug lord Pablo Escobar) and Guests of the Ayatollah (about the Iranian hostage crisis). He is a regular contributor to The Atlantic and Vanity Fair and a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was a staff writer for 24 years. He lives in Oxford, PA with his family and 100 guinea hens.

Dan Sipe is a historian at Moore College of Art and Design with a special interest in combined media approaches to interpreting and representing history. He has produced documentary films, most notably the series One Village in China which was aired on PBS and the BBC. Small Happiness, an hour-long documentary from the series won a Peabody Award for Excellence in Television Broadcasting. Sipe has programmed film series that deal with history, collaborated on a performance piece, and worked with public high school students to create a multimedia program which was selected by the Smithsonian for its Technology Showcase for its 150th anniversary. Currently, he is working on transferring a large archive on U.S. health activism to the Rare Books and Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania.