LIVONIA –On Thursday, October 29, Schoolcraft College will host a Meet the Author Event featuring local author Tom Mooradian. He will be discussing his book, “The Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and the KGB.” The event will take place from 1 – 3 p.m. in the Presentation Room of the VisTaTech Center on the college’s Livonia campus.
     In 1947 Mooradian, an honors graduate and basketball star from Southwestern High School in Detroit, joined a repatriation group and went to Soviet Armenia. He ended up fighting for his freedom and, at times, his own survival for 13 years, living behind the Iron Curtain. In his memoir, “The Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and the KGB,” shares his experiences living in the Soviet Union in one of that region’s most tragic and compelling eras.
Mooradian shares his experiences attending the Institute of Physical Culture and Sports, where he earned a bachelor’s degree; coaching junior basketball teams; and becoming a legendary basketball player for Soviet Armenia; all while pursuing the freedom to return to America.
      As an award-winning student journalist in high school, Mooradian viewed his time in Soviet Armenia through a journalistic lens and was afforded the opportunity to see and experience what no other western journalist or foreign correspondent or diplomat had been permitted to see: the Soviet Union as the Soviets lived. Now he shares his story with us in “The Repatriate.”     
This meet the author event is sponsored by Pageturners, Schoolcraft College’s book club for students, faculty, staff and the community. In addition, Pageturners will also sponsor two other discussions of “The Repatriate” on Monday, October 26 at 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday, October 27 at 1:30 p.m. in the Bradner Library on the college’s campus in Livonia.
      Copies of “The Repatriate” are available at a 40% discount in the college’s Student Activities Office or at the Radcliff Center in Garden City. For more information on this event or other Pageturners activities email erybicka@schoolcraft.edu or call 734-462-4400 ext. 5685.
      Schoolcraft College is a public two-year college, offering classes at the Livonia campus, Haggerty Road between Six and Seven Mile Roads; at the Radcliff Center in Garden City, 1751 Radcliff Street; and online at schoolcraft.edu.

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