Acclaimed journalist and artist Molly Crabapple has drawn and reported on stories from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan and across the United States. With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.

On the release of her memoir Drawing Blood, which intersperses testimony of her own artistic and journalistic engagement with full-colour illustrations, we welcome Molly Crabapple to the Frontline Club to reflect on recent projects and to share her personal insight into the use of art as a tool for better understanding and documenting current events. With US presidential primaries now firmly underway, she will discuss her ongoing work on topical home turf issues including policing and the justice system, as well as her experiences covering the effects of conflict across the Middle East.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called “an emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery” by the New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. She is the winner of a 2015 Front Page Award for her drawings of Aleppo for Vanity Fair, and was shortlisted for a Frontline Award in 2013. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

This event will be chaired by Natasha Lennard, a British-born, New York-based writer of news and political analysis, focusing on justice, power, biopolitics and dissent. She writes regularly for the Intercept, Fusion and Al Jazeera America, and has written for VICE News, The New York Times, Salon, The Nation and Politico, among others. She is editor-at-large at The New Inquiry journal.

Illustration: Molly Crabapple for VICE: ‘What Life is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo’

Gulwali Passarlay was only 12 years old when he left his home and family in Afghanistan. He would be shot at, imprisoned and almost drown before he reached his new home in Britain.

Fleeing the violence and reprisals of the Afghan war, Passarlay was smuggled into Iran, separated from his brother in Pakistan, and forced to spend 50 hours on a dangerously overcrowded boat on the Mediterranean. Braving oppressive heat and the freezing cold, his 12 month odyssey took him across an entire continent.

We welcome Gulwali Passarlay to the Frontline Club in conversation with journalist and former Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC, David Loyn, to share his story as documented in his memoir The Lightless Sky, and to offer his personal insight into the current refugee crisis. As an accomplished ambassador and advisor, Passerlay holds the unique position of both witness to and spokesperson for the plight of refugees in Britain.

Gulwali Passarlay is an Afghan political refugee currently reading politics and international relations at the University of Manchester. He has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 News and TEDx.

He will be joined by co-author of The Lightless Sky and journalist, Nadene Ghouri.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

For over two decades, Christina Lamb has reported from Afghanistan, with unparalleled access to all key decision makers. She has developed an extensive understanding of the country, its people and the ongoing conflict.

In her new book Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, she offers her final analysis of the realities of Afghanistan. She tells the story of well-intentioned men and women going into a place they did not understand, thinking it was the right thing to do, and how it became a conflict that everyone wanted to exit.

Christina Lamb will be joining us in conversation with BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter, Sarah Montague, to give her personal account of the longest war fought by the United States in its history, and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. She will offer her insight into the mistakes made, the lessons learned and the Afghanistan that is left behind.

Christina Lamb is the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times, she has been a foreign correspondent for more than twenty five years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then The Sunday Times. She is the author of The Africa House, House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe, Waiting For Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and co-author of I Am Malala.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

In 2000, Srdja Popovic was one of the leaders of the Serbian nonviolent resistance group Otpor! that helped topple Slobodan Milošević. Then in 2003 he decided to use his experience to help pro-democracy activists around the world, teaching them how to bring down a dictator.

From the streets of Egypt to New York, Popovic teaches a toolkit of resistance, promoting the use of non-violence to achieve political and social goals.

In his new book, Blueprint for Revolution, Popovic documents his own journey from Belgrade rock kid to revolutionary leader, as well as sharing the stories of the many revolutionaries he has met along the way.

He will be joining us in conversation with Steve Crawshaw, director of the office of the secretary general at Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance, to share his story and the ingenious ways in which non-violent resistance has achieved its means around the world, from Occupy Wall Street to Tahrir Square, and from Nelson Mandela to Harvey Milk.

Srdja Popovic is a Serbian biologist, political activist and executive director of the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). As the director of CANVAS, Popovic has consulted with revolutionary activists from countries including Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. The PRIO tipped him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Wired listed him as one of 50 people who will change the world and he was one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2013.

The politics of Iran are frequently analysed and debated on the international stage but rarely do we glimpse what everyday life is like in Tehran. In her new book City of Lies, Ramita Navai returns to the city where she was born to explore the lives of its residents.

Navai focuses on eight protagonists: a porn star, an ageing socialite, an assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, a volunteer religious militiaman who undergoes a sex change, a dutiful housewife who files for divorce and an old-time thug running a gambling den. Drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society, their lives present a fascinating and intimate portrait of a complex, colourful and changing city.

Ramita Navai will be joining us in conversation with the BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, to talk about her exploration of modern-day Tehran and what life in the city signals about how the country will develop.

Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian journalist and reporter for Channel 4’s foreign affairs series, Unreported World. Born in Tehran, she has reported from over 30 different countries, including Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. She was awarded an EMMY for her undercover report from Syria. She has also worked as a journalist for the United Nations in Pakistan, northern Iraq and Iran, and was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003 to 2006.

Despite the constant threat, she continues to work tirelessly to investigate armed conflict, drug trafficking, organised crime and issues around women and violence. Currently working for the national newspaper El Tiempo, in 2012 she was one of 10 women awarded the International Women of Courage Award and in October this year she was named as one of the 100 most influential journalists covering armed violence and conflict around the world, by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

We are honoured to welcome Jineth Bedoya Lima to the Frontline Club, she will be talking to Ed Vulliamy, a writer for The Guardian and Observer, about her prolific career as a journalist in Colombia, the work she does on conflict-related sexual violence and the ongoing peace process.

His mother, Kathy Eldon, heart broken by her son’s death, turned her mind to how she could transform the horror of what happened to him into a positive force for good. For 20 years, through filmmaking and campaigning, she has kept her son’s memory alive and celebrated his life by supporting those with a similar vision.

She will be joining us to talk about her journey, how she travelled to Somalia to try and understand why her son had been killed and how his life inspired her and her daughter, Amy Eldon Turteltaub, to start the Creative Visions Foundation, to support creative activists who use media and the arts to create social impact.

Chaired by John Owen, Professor of International Journalism at City University London and Chairman of the Frontline Club. He was formerly head of CBC Television News and, more recently, Executive Producer for Al Jazeera programmes from 2010-11.

Kathy Eldon‘s memoir – In the Heart of Life: A Memoir – has just been released. The event will feature a clip from the 1998 documentary Dying to Tell the Story.

As political instability continues in Egypt, renowned Arab journalist Yosri Fouda will be joining the BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen in conversation, to give some insight into how this situation will develop.

They will be looking at the role played by the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups, how deep the divisions are in Egypt and what will shape the country’s political future.

Image credit: George Nazmi Bebawi / Shutterstock.com

Nearly three years after the start of the revolution in Tunisia, which was followed by uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, many are beginning to examine what has changed in the region. Fighting still rages in Syria’s bloody civl war, Egypt has seen it’s democratically elected president removed by the military and sectarian divisions are rife.

One of those that has had a front row seat of this recent history is the BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief, Paul Danahar. With a combination of access to the key players and extensive coverage on the ground his new book The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring, offers a fascinating and illuminating analysis of the new order. He will be joining us in conversation with BBC Arabic’s Samir Farah, to share his insight and analysis of events and what he feels the future holds for the region and its relationship with the West.

Paul Danahar was the BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief from 2010–13, running the organisation’s news coverage of the Arab Spring. He was awarded an MBE in 2003 for his work as the Baghdad Bureau Chief during the American-led invasion. Prior to his present posting he was the BBC’s East Asia Bureau Chief for three years, and previous to that he was the BBC’s South Asia Bureau Chief. In 2013 he was appointed the BBC’s North America Bureau Chief, based in Washington.

Since Italian NGO Emergency was established in 1994 it has provided free, high quality health care to more than 5,200,000 victims of war, landmines and poverty.

Founded by Gino Strada and a group of colleagues, Emergency has now worked in 16 countries, building hospitals, surgical centres, rehabilitation centres, paediatric clinics, first aid posts, primary health clinics, a maternity centre and a centre for cardiac surgery.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome Gino Strada to the Frontline Club, where he will be talking to photographer Giles Duley about his life and work as a war surgeon and founder of Emergency.

Gino Strada graduated in medicine and trauma surgery from the University of Milan in 1978. In 1988 he decided to apply his surgical experience to helping and treating war victims. From 1989 to 1994 he worked in war zones across the world from Ayacucho, Peru to Kabul, Afghanistan, with the Geneva-based International Red Cross. The experience accumulated from years of war surgery made him realise the need for a small, agile, highly specialised medical organisation and in 1994 with few resources he and a group of colleagues founded Emergency.

Giles Duley worked for 10 years as a fashion and music photographer before becoming an accomplished humanitarian photographer. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide in many respected publications including Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, The Observer and the New Statesman. In 2010 he was nominated for an Amnesty International Media Award and was a winner at the Prix de Paris in 2010 & 2012. His self-portrait was selected for the 2012 Taylor Wessing Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. In 2011, whilst on patrol with 75th Cavalry Regiment, United States Army in Afghanistan, Duley stepped on an improvised explosive device. He was severely injured, losing both legs and an arm.