Best-selling author Azar Nafisi, professor of international studies at Johns Hopkins University, not only won a fellowship from Oxford, but also taught English literature at several universities in Iran. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil, and left Iran for America in 1997. At the 2004 National Book Festival she discusses her most recent book, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Random House, 2004); a courageous and moving story of how she and her resilient young students managed to escape the harsh constraints of their daily lives through the literature they read together every week. From the Series:The Library of Congress: 2004 National Book Festival