Born Round Journalist Bruni to Speak on Campus

Posted on Oct. 27, 2010

Frank Bruni ’86, former restaurant critic for The New York Times, will give a free, public lecture in the Carroll Hall auditorium at 4 p.m. on Nov. 5.

Bruni’s talk is titled “An Extraordinary Journalistic Adventure.” He will take the audience on a lively journey through his varied, versatile career in journalism that has spanned movie coverage, Vatican reporting, the presidential campaign trail and restaurant criticism. From flying on the pope’s plane, to sitting on the back porch in Kennebunkport with George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, to dining with actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, to riding in a Bradley fighting vehicle across Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for several days, his career has run a fascinating gamut. A book signing will follow.

As an undergraduate at UNC, Bruni was a Morehead scholar and worked on the staff of The Daily Tar Heel. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

He was profiled in the November/December 2009 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review in a feature article titled “Brutally Frank.” His book, Born Round, documents his life dealing with food and an eating disorder.

His talk is sponsored by the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication/Carnegie-Knight Fund, UNC School of Medicine, UNC Eating Disorders Program, UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and UNC School of Social Work/Daniels Endowment.

Bruni will give a second talk will at noon on Saturday, Nov. 6, at “The Mind-Body Solution: Women’s Mental Health and Wellness Conference” at the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. He will discuss some of the themes explored in his New York Times-bestselling book “Born Round”: childhood obesity, diet and fitness, the restaurant scene, and being The New York Times’ restaurant critic. The UNC Department of Psychiatry presents the Sixth Annual UNC Conference on Eating Disorders in conjunction with the UNC Eating Disorders Program and the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders.

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More online…

• Brutally Frank: The high-profile restaurant critic knew that food could be his undoing. He took up knife and fork and attacked. From the November/December 2009 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review, available online to Carolina Alumni members.

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