Michael and Ivy Meeropol have been added to the first session of our 2009 Seminar, Historical Fiction and The Search for Truth. The Meeropols are the son and granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by the United States in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage in passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Their personal relationship to this controversial episode in American history has informed their professional work with an acute sense of what is at stake in the writing of histories and historical fictions.

Michael Meeropol edited The Rosenberg Letters (the complete prison correspondence of his parents), and co-wrote We Are Your Sons, The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg with his brother Robert. Michael Meeropol's interest in how fiction illuminates "the truth" about historical events and figures has brought him into dialogue with writers of historical fiction including E.L. Doctorow, whose The Book of Daniel is a fictionalized account of the Rosenberg family. Meeropol is also the author of Surrender, How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution, and a regular commentator on economic and political issues for WAMC, the NPR affiliate in Albany, NY.

Ivy Meeropol is a producer and director of documentary films and television series, a screenwriter, a journalist, and a writer of fiction. She directed and produced Heir to An Execution (2003), a documentary film about the legacy of her grandparents, which premiered in the Documentary Competition of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She also directed and produced The Hill (2007), a six-part series about Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) and his staff; and directed the feature-length documentary All About Abe, the story of Abe Pollin.

Click here for a complete list of this year's speakers, with links to full biographical and media information.
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