Best-Selling Author Larry Tye to Speak After 'Fences' on Sept. 20 at Huntington Stage

In conjunction with the Huntington Theatre Company's production of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play about a former Negro Baseball Leagues star whose rise from the Leagues hit the ceiling of racial prejudice, New York Times best-selling author of Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend Larry Tye will speak at the post-show Humanities Forum on Sunday, September 20.

Tye's books include The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, and Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. He runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship, which is designed to help the media do a better job covering critical health care issues. He was a reporter at The Boston Globe from 1986 to 2001, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as The Globe's environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. Tye, who lives with his wife and two children outside of Boston, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-1994. He is now working on a biography of Superman for Random House.

The Huntington Theatre Company opened its 28th season - a season of American stories - with Fences, the sixth chapter of August Wilson's groundbreaking ten-play cycle about the 20th century African-American experience. Kenny Leon (Radio Golf, Gem of the Ocean, A Raisin in the Sun), acclaimed director and Wilson's final collaborator before his death, returns to the Huntington to helm the production, which stars John Beasley (Two Trains Running, Jitney, Rudy, The Apostle, "Everwood"). Fences plays through October 11, 2009; tickets are $20 - $82.50. More information at huntingtontheatre.org/fences or 617 266-0800.