The American Humanist Association will celebrate Philip Pullman this summer as International Humanist Awardee. “His popular and sometimes controversial works champion such humanist values as kindness, love, courage, courtesy, intellectual curiosity, and opposition to organized dogma and tyranny.” The World Humanist Congress Evening Awards Banquet will take place Saturday, 7 June at L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington D.C. Read more.
“The AHA actively educates the public about Humanism, brings Humanists together for mutual support and action, defends the civil liberties and constitutional freedoms of Humanists-indeed of all peoples-and leads both local and national Humanist organizations toward progressive societal change.”
Philip Pullman will be speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival Monday, 31st March to launch upcoming title Once Upon a Time in the North. “The book recounts the very first meeting of these two heroes - Lee Scoresby and his hare daemon, Hester, crash land their trading balloon on to Novy Odense, a port in the far Arctic North, and so find themselves right in the middle of a political powder keg that threatens to explode into a street-fight. Honour is at stake and Lee is not a man to duck a matter of honour.”
Tickets (£15, or £10 for children) are available at the Oxford Playhouse.
In preparation for the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Kevin Nance speaks to festival director Lawrence Weschler and Philip Pullman himself. “He’s a huge phenomenon,” says Weschler, whose school-aged daughter first introduced him to the His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman looks positively towards the premiere of the Golden Compass film describing wonderful performances from both star Nicole Kidman and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra. Read more.
Philip Pullman will be in dialogue with Weschler and his daughter Sara Weschler (now 20) at 1230 pm this Saturday, 3rd November at the Harold Washington Library Center Auditorium. He will also deliver a lecture, “The Elementary Particles of Narrative,” at 200 pm Sunday, 4th November at Columbia College’s Film Row Cinema. Both engagements are now sold out.
The official film website now features an extended trailer produced for last week’s multi-genre fan festival Comic-Con. Mostly a re-editing of the footage shown to the press at Cannes, it features previously unseen footage of Dakota Blue Richards and the rest of the cast. A higher resolution version is available over at Yahoo!.
Israel’s annual science-fiction and fantasy convention runs this year on 3-5 April, in Holon. Jointly managed by the Israeli Tolkien society and the Israeli HDM community, the convention will have several talks of interest to His Dark Materials fans.
“His Borrowed Materials” by Netanela Davidovich: How did Milton inspired Pullman? Why Lewis is turning in his grave, and how does ‘Genesis’ fits in? This lecture describes the inspiration sources of “His Dark Materials”, the trilogy written by the British writer Phillip Pullman. From Adam and Eve’s myth as it appears in “Genesis”, through Milton’s “Paradise lost” and completing with Oxford writers from the last centaury.
“Tell me what your Daemon form is and I would tell you who you are” / Hagit Wienner - In almost every human culture there is a humanization of animals, in many fantasy books talking animals take part, and the idea of humans that become animals is known there as well, but in “His Dark Materials” Philip Pullman has made the animal an inseparable part of humans. What are the human qualities we gave to different animals? And is there a real connection between the Daemon’s form and his human personality?
The American Humanist Association will celebrate Philip Pullman this summer as International Humanist Awardee. “His popular and sometimes controversial works champion such humanist values as kindness, love, courage, courtesy, intellectual curiosity, and opposition to organized dogma and tyranny.” The World Humanist Congress Evening Awards Banquet will take place Saturday, 7 June at L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington D.C. Read more.
Israel’s annual science-fiction and fantasy convention runs this year on 3-5 April, in Holon. Jointly managed by the Israeli Tolkien society and the Israeli HDM community, the convention will have several talks of interest to His Dark Materials fans.
