Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, will speak Sunday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Page Commons Room, Cotter Union, Colby College. A 1999 Gannett Lecture, it is free and open to the public.

Chang's historical narrative, The Rape of Nanking, (Basic Books, Dec. 1997) describes one of the great atrocities in world history: the seven-week slaughter, rape and torture of more than 300,000 Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in China's capital. Chang's book, an international and New York Times bestseller, is the first full study in English of the tragedy.

A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana's journalism program, Chang worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and Chicago Tribune before winning a graduate fellowship to the writing seminars program at Johns Hopkins University. She is also the author of Thread of the Silkworm, a highly praised biography of Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, the father of modern Chinese rocketry and the Chinese "silkworm" missile.