visualizAsian’s back! Meet Roxana Saberi, journalist & author of “Between Two Worlds”

roxana saberiErin and I took a summer hiatus, but visualizAsian.com is back, and proud to kick off a new season of interviews with a conversation with Iranian-Japanese American journalist Roxana Saberi, whose recent book, “Between Two Worlds,” chronicles the harrowing experience of being imprisoned, charged with espionage and sentenced to eight years in a notorious Iranian prison before being released after five months in May 2009.

We’ll be talking to Roxana on Tuesday, August 31 at 6 pm PT (9 pm ET) via phone and web —You’ve missed the live interview, but for a limited time, you can still join in the conversation by registering and listening to the archived MP3 recording..

Roxana recently spoke about her ordeal at the annual convention of the Asian American Journalists Association, and I sat in on the panel.

She captivated the audience with her story of choosing to be a journalist in a dangerous political hotspot, of her unexpected capture and fear and frustration at her situation, the flashes of humane treatment she received from some of her guards, and even the humorous moments (in hindsight) over her efforts to give surreptitious messages to her boyfriend and family.

She captures all of this and more in compelling prose in “Between Two World,” and she’ll be reading passages from it during our conversation.

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Laura Ling, Euna Lee & Kim Jong Il through the eyes of Tak Toyoshima, Secret Asian Man

Illustration 
by cartoonist Tak Toyoshima of Laura Ling and Euna Lee with Kim Jong Il looming over them.

I had to post this, although I haven’t had time to blog about the Asian American Journalists Association convention last week in Boston. This illustration was in the organization’s silent auction and I had to have it.

Cartoonist Tak Toyoshima, who draws the syndicated comic “Secret Asian Man,” drew this the day before the start of the convention, specially for the auction.

Since the recent release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee was so fresh in everyone’s minds, and the topic of “Journalists in Jeopardy,” including Ling and Lee but also Roxana Saberi, was the plenary session that kicked off the convention, the drawing seemed the perfect symbol of the spirit of the convention, and of the AAJA.