Eve Ensler and Stephen Lewis

EVE ENSLER (Playwright/Performer/Activist), award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, is touring 20 North American cities from October 2005-April 2006 with her newest play The Good Body, following engagements on Broadway in NYC, at ACT in San Francisco, and in a workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre (http://www.thegoodbody.org). Ensler is founder and artistic director of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls (http://www.vday.org). The Vagina Monologues has been translated into more than 35 languages and has run in theaters worldwide, including sold-out runs at Off-Broadway’s Westside Theater and on London’s West End (2002 Olivier Award nom., Best Entertainment). The 2002 documentary The Vagina Monologues aired on HBO and features Ensler’s acclaimed performance of the piece. Her play Necessary Targets, set in a Bosnian refugee camp, opened Off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theatre in February 2002, following a hit run at Hartford Stage Company. Ensler’s other plays include Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man and Extraordinary Measures. The Good Body, The Vagina Monologues, and Necessary Targets have been published by Villard/ Random House, who will also publish Ms. Ensler’s upcoming books Insecure at Last: Guidelines to Groundlessness and I Am an Emotional Creature. Ensler is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in playwriting, the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for leadership, and the Matrix Award (2002). She is an executive producer of “What I Want My Words to Do to You,” a documentary about the writing group she has led since 1998 at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. The film had its world premiere at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the Freedom of Expression Award; the film premiered nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.”

Formerly the Special Envoy to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Stephen Lewis is the chair of the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation in Canada (www.stephenlewisfoundation.org). Mr. Lewis is a Professor in Global Health, Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. And he is Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, a new international AIDS advocacy organization, based in the United States.

Stephen Lewis’ work with the United Nations spanned more than two decades. He was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from June 2001 until the end of 2006. From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Lewis was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF at the organization’s global headquarters in New York. From 1984 through 1988, Stephen Lewis was Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr. Lewis was an elected member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly from 1963 to1978. In 1970, he became leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, during which time he became leader of the Official Opposition.

Mr. Lewis is co-chair of the Leadership Programme Committee for the XVII International AIDS Conference, which will be held in Mexico City in August 2008. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

Mr. Lewis is the author of the best-selling book, Race Against Time. He holds 28 honorary degrees from Canadian universities and is a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. He was awarded the Pearson Peace Medal in 2004 by the United Nations Association in Canada; the award celebrates outstanding achievement in the field of international service and understanding. In 2007, the Kingdom of Lesotho (a small mountainous country in Southern Africa) invested Mr. Lewis as Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe. The order is named for the founder of Lesotho; the knighthood is the country’s highest honour.