Award-winning journalist and National Public Radio (NPR) host Michele Norris will give the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture Feb. 4, 4:45-6:15 p.m., at Sage Chapel.

Norris is the author of the 2010 best-selling memoir, “The Grace of Silence,” which began as a quest to uncover how America talked about race in the wake of the 2008 presidential election and became an eye-opening family history lesson revealing Norris’ family’s racial legacy and a window on America’s complicated racial history.

The book also led to “The Race Card Project,” a blog that asks people to submit their thoughts and observations about race in a single sentence of six words, and NPR’s “Backseat Book Club.” Norris has addressed thousands of students through campus “One Book” programs, encouraging discussions about the history of race relations in the United States.

Norris co-hosted NPR’s newsmagazine “All Things Considered,” public radio’s longest-running national program, from 2002 to 2012. She was a correspondent for ABC News, 1993-2002, and reported extensively on education, inner-city issues, the nation’s drug problem and poverty. She also reported for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.

Norris earned an Emmy and a Peabody Award for her contribution to ABC News’ coverage of 9/11. In 2009 Norris was named one of Essence Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Black Americans” and “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Norris is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where she studied journalism.