'The hikers' bring their story to the Free Library

When Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal (an Elkins Park, PA native) accidentally crossed an unmarked border from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran on a hiking trip in summer 2009, they were arrested by border guards, detained, accused of being spies, and imprisoned. This month, they'll be coming to the Free Library for a conversation led by the Inquirer's Trudy Rubin about their new memoir, A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran.

Shourd suffered 410 days of solitary confinement inside Tehran's Evin Prison in 2009-2010. Bauer (who married Shourd in 2012) and their friend Fattal spent more than two years imprisoned before their release in September 2011. Since her own release, Shourd, a scholar and writer who had been an internatonal traveler and human rights advocate before her imprisonment, has taken up the cause of those held in prolonged solitary confinement in US prisons. Her new memoir about the ordeal in Iran was co-authored by Bauer and Fattal.

"Their surreal and traumatic ordeal reads like the stuff of Kafka," the Free Library says. "Told in a unique interweaving of all three authors’ voices, A Sliver of Light tells their story of psychological and physical torment, as well as of the powerful bonds created between the hikers, their fellow prisoners, and even some of their captors."

Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal, in conversation with Trudy Rubin, will speak about their new memoir, A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, at the Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, on Thursday March 20 at 7:30pm. The event is free, and no tickets are required. For more information, call 215-567-4341 or visit the Library's website.