Deborah Amos, UF graduate and NPR correspondent, to speak Sept. 26 at Phillips

September 18, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — WUFT-FM Classic 89 will celebrate its 25th broadcast anniversary with a special presentation by National Public Radio international correspondent and University of Florida alumna Deborah Amos.

The special presentation on her experience covering news abroad starts at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26 in the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. To reserve tickets, call the Performing Arts Box Office at 352-392-ARTS or 800-905-ARTS or Nancy Ward at 352-392-5200, ext. 1113.

Amos covers Iraq for NPR News. Her reports can be heard on NPR’s award-winning “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” and “Weekend Edition.” In addition to providing reports to NPR, Amos is a correspondent with ABC News, a role she began in 1993.

Prior to joining ABC News, Amos spent 16 years with NPR, where she was most recently the London Bureau Chief. Previously she was based in Amman, Jordan, as an NPR foreign correspondent. Amos won several awards, including an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and a Breakthru Award, and widespread recognition for her coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. She spent 1991-92 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and is the author of “Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World.”

Amos joined NPR in 1977, where she was first a director and then a producer for “Weekend All Things Considered” until 1979, after which she worked on documentaries until 1985. In 1982, she received the Prix Italia, the Ohio State Award, and a duPont-Columbia Award for “Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown;” and in 1984 she received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for “Refugees.”

Amos began her career in 1972 after receiving a degree in broadcasting from UF. Recently she has been heard extensively on “Morning Edition” with special reports from Damascus and London.

For more information, contact Sue Wagner at 352-392-5200, ext. 1106.