Terry Gross, host of NPR's Fresh Air, will be Vassar commencement speaker, Sunday, May 27, 2007
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY — Terry Gross, the host and co-executive producer of National Public Radio's Peabody Award-winning program Fresh Air, will deliver the address at the 143rd Vassar College commencement exercises, on Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 10:00 a.m., at the college's outdoor amphitheater.
http://commencement.vassar.edu/2007/speaker.html
As the host of Fresh Air, NPR's weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, Gross's interviews are heard by more than 4.7 million people on more than 450 public radio stations. Her guests have included a multitude of celebrated artists, writers, actors, and musicians, among them Philip Roth, James Brown, John Travolta, Sonny Rollins, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
[Left: Terry Gross. Photo: Will Ryan] Gross is known for her thoughtful, probing interview style, which The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "a remarkable blend of empathy, warmth, genuine curiosity, and sharp intelligence." And The Boston Phoenix called Gross "almost certainly the best cultural interviewer in America, and one of the best all-around interviewers, period. Her smart, thoughtful questioning pushes her guests in unlikely directions. Her interviews are revelatory in a way other people's seldom are."
Fresh Air, NPR's most listened-to program, first broadcast out of WHYY in Philadelphia in 1975, and began national distribution on NPR in 1987. Gross and Fresh Air have received several awards since, including a Peabody Award (1994), and the America Women In Radio and Television's "Gracie Award" in the category of National Network Radio Personality (1999). In 2003, Gross received the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, for advancing the "growth, quality and positive image of radio." Gross's book All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists, a collection of her favorite interviews from Fresh Air, was published by Hyperion in 2004.