Helen Prejean To Lecture At Fairfield University

FAIRFIELD — Helen Prejean, CSJ, the nun whose work counseling death row inmates led to her best-selling book Dead Man Walking and the Academy Award-winning film of the same title, will deliver the 3rd Annual Ignatian Residential College Lecture at Fairfield University. The lecture will be presented by Open Visions Forum, a program of University College, at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Wednesday, April 6, at 8 pm.

In 1981, Sister Prejean began her prison ministry, dedicating her life to the poor of New Orleans while spending her time at the St Thomas housing project. While she was there, she started a correspondence with Patrick Sonnier, who was convicted of killing two teenagers and was sentenced to die in the electric chair in Louisiana.

In lending Mr Sonnier spiritual support, Sister Prejean wrote of her experiences in Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. The book was nominated for a 1993 Pulitzer Prize, and won a place on the 1994 American Library Associates Notable Book List, as well as ranking number one on The New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks.

In 1996, the book was developed into a major motion picture and was nominated for four Oscars.

Sister Prejean is dedicated to educating the public about the death penalty by lecturing, organizing, and writing. She is the founder of Survive, a victim’s advocacy group in New Orleans and counsels both inmates on death row and families of murder victims.

Her newly published book, The Death of Innocents, focuses on Virginia and Louisiana cases in which she again serves as a spiritual supporter of two men on death row she believes have been wrongly accused. The New York Times reviewed the book, saying that “her prose is, as in Dead Man Walking, luminous, undecorated, angry, and very moving.”

In her current book tour Sister Prejean talks about the need for political engagement, for letters to be written to politicians, and for young people to aid in this cause.

Helen Prejean joined the Sisters of St Joseph of Medaille in 1957 and received a BA in English and education from St Mary’s Dominican College, New Orleans, in 1962. In 1973, she earned an MA in religious education from St Paul’s University in Ottawa, Canada.

Tickets for her lecture at Fairfield University are $25 for adults and $22.50 for senior citizens. For tickets, call the Quick Center box office at 203-254-4010 or visit the website www.Quick Center.com.