The 1989 Salman Rushdie visit and Khomeini's fatwa.

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The NYS Writers Institute welcomes Salman Rushdie to Albany later this month, nearly 30 years after the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwā ordering his execution forced the cancellation of a scheduled appearance in 1989.

The event, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 19, at Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue in Albany, is free and open to the public.

In May, 1987, NYS Writers Institute Director Tom Smith typed a letter to Salman Rushdie, inviting the author to visit the University at Albany to give a reading and discuss writing with students and the community. Correspondence between Smith, Rushdie and the Viking Penguin publishing house culminated in an agreement: Rushdie and his wife, author Marianne Wiggins, would appear at a Writers Institute event on February 28, 1989.

Rushdie, whose second novel Midnight's Children (1981) gave him an international following, was set to publish his fourth novel, titled The Satanic Verses in September, 1988.

Within months of its publication, The Satanic Verses was banned in India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and several other countries, book burnings attracted crowds in the thousands and riots led to dozens of deaths around the world.

On February 14, 1989, Iran's spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwā, an order calling for Rushdie's death:

"I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death."

A $6-million bounty was placed on Rushdie's head and the Tehran press denounced the novel as a "shameless onslaught on the sacred character of Islam's prophet."

Rushdie and Wiggins went into hiding and Viking Penguin canceled all events involving the book.

In Albany, Smith and William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize winner and founder of the Writers Institute, defended Rushdie's novel and staged a public reading. "Fiction is what we've done at the Writers Institute for the past five years and that's what we'll continue to do," Smith told the Albany Times Union.

29 years later, Salman Rushdie makes his first visit to the Writers Institute.

Click on the thumbnails to see archived correspondence and news clippings from the cancelled Rushdie event of 1989.