(May 12, 2008) — Project Literacy of Bergen County will present “A Conversation with Barbara Walters” on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. in the Bergen Community College Gymnasium, 400 Paramus Road, Paramus, NJ.  Ticket prices are: $20 for regular seating and $45 for upfront seating and a free autographed copy of Ms. Walters’ new book, Audition: A Memoir. 

For tickets call Bergen Community College Office of Community and Cultural Affairs at 201-447-7428 or go online to http://tickets.bergen.edu.   All proceeds from the evening will go to support Project Literacy, a non-profit organization dedicated to solving the crisis in adult literacy affecting an estimated 30 million Americans and one in five residents of Bergen County.        

Ms. Walters will be interviewed by Dr. G. Jeremiah Ryan, president of Bergen Community College.  In her long-awaited memoir, Ms. Walters writes with candor about her private life and professional career reflecting on the choices she has made, the work she has done, the people she has met, and the heartbreak and challenges she has coped with along the way. Barbara Walters has arguably interviewed more statesmen and star than any other journalist in history.

She is known to daytime television viewers as a panelist on ABC’s “The View,” recipient of the 2003 Daytime Emmy Award. She is also the program’s co-executive producer. Ms. Walters made journalism history by arranging the first joint interview with Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat and Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin in 1977. Another of her “firsts” was an hour-long primetime conversation with Cuban President Fidel Castro—an interview that was printed in a half-dozen languages and shown all over the world. At the other extreme, in 1999 Ms. Walters conducted the first television interview with Monica Lewinsky for ABC News, which became the highest-rated news program ever broadcast by a single network.  

In September 2004, after 25 years as the co-host and chief correspondent of ABC News’ “20/20,” Ms. Walters left the show to begin a new phase in her career at the network. She remains an active member of the news division and network, substantially increasing the number of primetime ABC News specials, in addition to her highly-rated “Barbara Walters Specials.”  Ms. Walters joined ABC News in 1976 as the first woman to co-host the network news.