Thursday, March 25 - 7 PM

Sam Dillon, co-author of “Opening Mexico” and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is a national correspondent for The New York Times . His new book is the product of historical research conducted in Mexico during 2000-2001, when he and co-author Julia Preston were recipients of a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grant. It also draws on his journalism work from 1995 through 2000, when he was the New York Times Mexico City bureau chief.

In 1998, Mr. Dillon was a member of The New York Times staff that won the Pulitzer Prize for international affairs, the result of ten articles that detailed the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico. Eleven years earlier, in 1987, he was one of six reporters for the Miami Herald who won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Iran Contra Affair.

His career in Latin America began in 1981, when he reported on the civil war in El Salvador as the head of the Associated Press's bureau there. A year later, the Miami Herald made him its San Salvador bureau chief, a post he held until 1995. For two years thereafter, based in Miami, he was a roving Latin American correspondent, covering developments in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Central America and Mexico. From 1987 to 1989, he was the Herald's bureau chief in Nicaragua during the height of the CIA's war there, and he also covered the U.S. invasion of Panama.

For his reportage on the Nicaraguan civil war, Mr. Dillon won the 1988 Tom Wallace Award, the Inter-American Press Association's top prize for political reporting. The ­ following year he won the same award again, for a series profiling Panamanian General Manuel Noriega's business empire. In 1989 he won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship and a book leave. He used the time to research and write “Comandos: The CIA and Nicaragua's Contra Rebels,” which won the Overseas Press Club's Award for Best Book on Foreign Affairs.

From 1990 to 1992 Mr. Dillon served as the Herald's South America bureau chief, based in Rio de Janeiro. He covered Brazil's environmental crisis, a cholera epidemic in Peru, and terror bombings in Argentina. He joined The New York Times in October 1992, serving as a metropolitan reporter until his departure for Mexico in 1995.

Since his return from a book leave in the fall of 2001, Mr. Dillon has worked for the foreign desk, covering Al Qaeda arrests in Spain, and for the national desk, covering the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. He is currently a national education correspondent, covering trends in public schools and higher education.

Julia Preston was a member of The New York Times staff that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on international affairs, for its series that profiled the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico.

Ms. Preston was named deputy investigations editor for The Times in March 2003. Previously she had been United Nations Bureau Chief since October 2002, covering the Security Council deliberations on Iraq. Prior to that, she was an editor on the Foreign Desk in New York. She was a New York Times correspondent in Mexico from September 1995 until September 2001.

Ms. Preston came to The Times in July 1995 after working at the Washington Post for nine years as a foreign correspondent. She is a 1997 recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for distinguished coverage of Latin America and a 1994 winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Humanitarian Journalism.

She covered the United Nations for The Post from January 1993 until May 1995, a period that included crises in Bosnia, Somalia, North Korea, Rwanda and Iraq. She was a Post Latin America correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1990 until 1992, covering the impeachment of President Fernando Collor de Mello.

Previously she was the Washington Post bureau chief in Miami from 1986 through 1989, covering wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala and the conflict between the United States and Panamanian general Manuel Antonio Noriega, as well as Cuba and Haiti. Before that Ms. Preston had worked for The Boston Globe and National Public Radio.

Journalist and author Marc Cooper has reported from Latin America for three decades. He is currently a contributing editor to The Nation and is a Senior Fellow for U.S./Mexico border issues at the Institute for Justice and Journalism at USC's Annenberg School For Communication.