Living Writers Schedule - Fall 2012

This fall, Living Writers is focused on international writers and writing. The line-up includes winners of the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, and even the Nobel Prize, as well as some exciting new voices.

All the readings are at 4:30 p.m. Thursdays and are open to the public. They also can be viewed live on the university's Livestream channel (except for Salman Rushdie). Books can be ordered at the Colgate Bookstore.

Waiting
September 13
Persson Auditorium

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Ha Jin’s first novel, Waiting, won the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award. Since then, he has published In the Pond, War Trash, and Nanjing Requiem, as well as other works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories and in three Pushcart Prize anthologies. He grew up in Liaoning Province, China, and now teaches creative writing at Boston University.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
September 20
Love Auditorium

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Alexandra Fuller’s debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. She has published three other works of nonfiction, including Scribbling the Cat, The Legend of Colton H Bryant, and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Granta, among others. She was born in England, grew up in Rhodesia, Africa, and currently lives in Wyoming.

War by Candlelight
October 4
Persson Auditorium

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Daniel Alarcón is the author of the story collection War by Candlelight, a finalist for the 2005 PEN-Hemingway Award, and the novel Lost City Radio. He is associate editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning quarterly published in his native Lima, Peru, and co-founder of Radio Ambulante, a Spanish-language radio program showcasing human stories from around Latin America and the United States. His fiction, journalism, and translations have appeared in McSweeney’s, Harper’s, and n+1, among others. Alarcón lives in Oakland, California, where he is a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies.

Reading Lolita in Tehran
October 11
Love Auditorium

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Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran was a New York Times bestseller and was named one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The London Times. She is also the author of the memoir Things I’ve Been Silent About and a critical study of Vladimir Nabokov titled Anti-Terra. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She grew up in Tehran, Iran, taught at the University of Tehran, and is currently a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

Let the Great World Spin
October 25
Love Auditorium

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Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann’s most recent novel, won the 2009 National Book Award and the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His other works include This Side of Brightness, Dancer, Zoli, and Everything in This Country Must. His newest novel, Thirteen Ways of Looking, will be published in early 2013. McCann was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now teaches creative writing at Hunter College in New York.

Y
November 1
Persson Auditorium

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Marjorie Celona is the author of Y, a novel born from a short story of the same name. Her work has appeared in The Best Nonrequired Reading, Harvard Review, Glimmer Train, Crazyhorse, and others. A former Olive B. O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University, she grew up on Vancouver Island, B.C., and currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Purple Hibiscus
November 8
Persson Auditorium

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Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Adichie’s debut novel, was published in 2003 and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She is also the author of the novel Half of a Yellow Sun and the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Her writing has appeared in various publications including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and Zoetrope. The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Adichie grew up in Nigeria and now divides her time between there and the United States.

CANCELLED
Snow
November 15
Love Auditorium

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Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. He is the author of the bestselling novels Snow and My Name is Red, which won the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His other works include Istanbul: Memories and the City and Other Colors, a collection of essays, as well as eight novels including The White Castle, The Black Book, and, most recently, The Museum of Innocence. He lives in New York.

Joseph Anton
November 29
Memorial Chapel
Co-sponsored with the Institute for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

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Salman Rushdie is the author of the novel Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize as well as the Best of the Booker Prize. Among his other novels are Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and Fury. His works of nonfiction include Imaginary Homelands, Step Across This Line, and the memoir of his years of hiding during the fatwā, Joseph Anton, published in September 2012. He was born in Bombay, India, and now lives in New York.

Living Writers Schedule - Fall 2012

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