Lannan Center Podcast

On Tuesday, April 8th, the Lannan Center hosted a reading by award-winning poet Roger Reeves, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Roger Reeves is the author of Dark Days: Fugitive Essays (Graywolf, 2023) and Best Barbarian (W.W. Norton & Co., 2022), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Tracy K. Smith called it “a revelation and a form of reparation.” His debut collection is King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), a Library Journal  Best Poetry Book of the year, and winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, two

On Thursday, March 27th, the Lannan Center welcomed award-winning author and journalist Omar El Akkad for a conversation with New York Times contributor Aida Alami as part of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate".Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade, he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists.His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ, and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Book

On Thursday, March 27th, the Lannan Center welcomed actress and activist Susan Sarandon to begin the final night of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate", with a reading from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The reading was followed by a conversation with biologist Dr. Dino J. Martins, moderated by author Aminatta Forna. Dr. Dino J. Martins is internationally respected for his evolutionary biology and entomological research, biodiversity conservation work, and natural history writing, and he is widely known as one of Kenya’s leading biological scientists. Dr. Martins graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from Indiana University in 1999 and worked on his M.Sc. in Botany at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2004. He earned his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 2011 before joining TBI as a postdoctoral fellow at Stony Brook University. Dr. Martins has taught in the TBI Origins field school every semester it has been offered si

On Wednesday, March 26th, the Lannan Center welcomed human rights and environmental justice activist Kumi Naidoo for a conversation with Climate Rights International Founder Brad Adams as part of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate".Kumi Naidoo is a prominent South African human rights and environmental justice activist. At the age of fifteen, he organized school boycotts against the apartheid educational system in South Africa. His courageous actions made him a target for the Security Police, leading to his exile in the United Kingdom, where he remained until 1990. Upon his return to South Africa, Kumi played a pivotal role in the legalization of the African National Congress in his home province of KwaZulu Natal.Currently, Kumi serves as a Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN). He holds the position of distinguished visiting lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and is a Professor of Practice at th

On Tuesday, March 25th, the Lannan Center welcomed award-winning author Amitav Ghosh for a conversation with journalist Razia Iqbal as part of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate".Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The Great Derangement; Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, appeared in 2016. Gun Island was released in September 2019. Ghosh’s first-ever book in verse, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, was published in February 2021. His latest books, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, was released in October 2021, and Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories was released in February 2024.

On Tuesday, February 25th, the Lannan Center welcomed award-winning poet Dana Levin for a reading, hosted by Carolyn Forché. Dana Levin is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Now Do You Know Where You Are (2022), a New York Times Notable Book and NPR “Book We Love.” Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day, in 2005, and in 2011, Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Banana Palace, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Rilke Prize.Levin’s poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, and Poetry. Her fellowships and awards include those from the National Endowment for the

On Tuesday, February 4th, the Lannan Center welcomed renowned poet, essayist, professor of Classics, and translator Anne Carson for a reading, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Anne Carson was born in Toronto, Ontario, on June 21, 1950. She attended St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto and, despite leaving twice, received her BA in 1974, her MA in 1975 and her PhD in 1981. Since bursting onto the international poetry scene in 1987 with her long poem “Kinds of Water,” Carson has published numerous books of poetry, including Wrong Norma (New Directions, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Award and long-listed for the National Books Critics Circle Award; Float (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016); Red Doc> (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013); The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Autobiography of Red (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); and Short Talks (Brick Books, 1992).Also a Classics scholar, Carson is the translator of Electra (Oxford Universi

On Tuesday, January 21st, the Lannan Center presented a reading featuring poets Eduardo C. Corral and Tyree Daye, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. He’s the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at Washington University at St. Louis.Tyree Daye was raised in Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the author of the poetry collections a little bump in the earth (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), and River Hymns (American Poetry Review, 2017), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. A Cave Canem fellow and a Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellow, Daye is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, a

On Tuesday, October 22nd, the Lannan Center presented an evening with award-winning author Aleksandar Hemon, hosted by Rabih Alameddine, Lannan Visiting Chair.Aleksandar Hemon is most recently the author of The World and All That It Holds (2023). He is also the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and three collections of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. His other works include two books of nonfiction, My Parents: An Introduction and The Book of My Lives, the novel The Making of Zombie Wars, journalism, screenplays, and content for the Netflix original show Sense8. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon visited Chicago in 1992, intending to stay for a matter of months. While he was there, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. Hemon wrote his first story in English in 1995. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fell

On Tuesday, October 1st, the Lannan Center presented an evening with Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, hosted by Tope Folarin, Lannan Creative Writing Visiting Lecturer.Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan author from Colombo. He is the author of two novels: Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010), which won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize, and the Gratiaen Prize, and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort of Books, 2022), which won the Booker Prize. His works have been translated into 26 languages. Karunatilaka is also the author of several children’s books, dedicated and inspired by his own children.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, September 24th, the Lannan Center presented a reading by Duncan Wu, Raymond Wagner Professor in Literary Studies, from his debut collection of poems Origin Myths (Shearsman, 2024).Duncan Wu began his career as a Fellow by Special Election at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the British Academy, in 1991. In 1995 he was appointed Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where he became Professor of Romantic Studies in 1999. In 2000 he was appointed University Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in English at St Catherine's College.  In January 2008, he left Oxford and came to Georgetown as a Professor of English. He has authored or edited a number of books, principally in the areas of Romantic Studies and Contemporary British Drama. These include Romanticism: An Anthology (four editions, 1994, 1998, 2007, 2012); A Companion to Romanticism (1998); Wordsworth's Readi

On March 21, 2024, renowned authors Reginald Dwayne Betts (Felon: Poems) and Zeke Caligiuri (This is Where I Am) offered their thoughts on the intersection of literature and the prison system as they discussed the impact of incarceration in shaping their writing lives, creative processes and narratives. This event was cosponsored by the Prisons and Justice Initiative. Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet and lawyer. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, he is the Executive Director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit organization that is radically transforming the access to literature in prisons through the installation of Freedom Libraries in prisons across this country. The author of a memoir and three collections of poetry, he has transformed his latest collection of poetry, the American Book Award winning Felon, into a solo theater show. Zeke Caligiuri is a writer and activist from South Minneapolis. He is the author of This is Where I Am (University of Minnesota Press), finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. He is the co-f

On March 20, 2024, bestselling author and deaf rights’ activist Sara Nović talked about her writing life and novelTrue Biz, with the Washington Post‘s Amanda Morris. This event was coponsored by the Disability Cultural Center and ASL interpreted. Sara Nović is the author of the New York Times bestseller True Biz. Her other books are Girl at War, which won the American Library Association’s Alex Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and America is Immigrants. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she studied fiction and literary translation, and is an instructor of Deaf studies and creative writing. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.Amanda Morris is a disability reporter for The Washington Post who has trailblazed on this beat. Before joining The Post in 2022, she was the inaugural disability reporting fellow for the New York Times and previously covered science, politics and national news for outlets like the Arizona Republic, the Associated Press, and NPR. She uses

On March 19, 2024 , acclaimed author Viet Thanh Nguyen discussed his memoir, A Man of Two Faces, and reflected on the TV adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer. With former Newshour host Razia Iqbal.Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer (Corsair, 2016) is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (coming to HBO as a TV series directed by Park Chan-wook). His other books include Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award), and The Committed. Nguyen is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, February 27, 2024, the Lannan Center presented a reading featuring Macedonian poet Nikola Madzirov and Slovene poet Aleš Šteger.Nikola Madzirov is the author of Remnants of Another Age and Relocated Stone, which received the Hubert Burda European Poetry Award and the prestigious Miladinov Brothers Award. He was awarded the Studentski Zbor Award for Locked in the City and the Aco Karamanov prize for Somewhere Nowhere. Born into a family of Balkan Wars refugee in 1973 in Strumica, Macedonia, Madzirov has gone on to participate in many international literary festivals and events in the US, Latin America, and Europe, and he has received several international awards and fellowships.Aleš Šteger, born 1973 in Ptuj, lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, novels, and essays as well as several books for young adults. He also works as an editor, translator and initiator of artistic and cultural events. Six of his books have been published in English: The Book of Things (B

On Tuesday, February 6, 2024, the Lannan Center presented a reading by poets Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Saddiq Dzukogi, Henneh Kyereh Kwaku, and Tolu Oloruntoba.Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and artist. Her debut poetry collection Quiet was published by Faber in 2022 and was the winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 in the Poetry category. Quiet was also shortlisted for the T.S. Elliot Prize and the Pollard Poetry Prize.Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet and Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), winner of the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the 2022 Julie Suk Award.Henneh Kyereh Kwaku is a poet of Bono heritage and the author of Revolution of the Scavengers (African Poetry Book Fund / Akashic Books, 2020). A 2022 resident at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora, and a recipient of the 2020 Samira Bawumia Literature Prize, he is originally from Gonasua in the Jaman South Munici

On Tuesday, November 7, 2023, the Lannan Center presented a special reading featuring poets Carolyn Forché, Ilya Kaminsky, Lyudmyla Khersonska, and Boris Kershonsky. Moderated by Askold Melnyczuk.Renowned as a “poet of witness,” Carolyn Forché is University Professor at Georgetown and the author of five books of poetry, including In the Lateness of the World: Poems (Penguin, 2020).Born in Odesa, Ukraine, Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), a New York Times’ Notable Book and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo, 2004).Lyudmyla Khersonska is a poet and translator from Odesa, Ukraine. She is the author of four poetry collections in Russian, including Today is A Different War (Arrowsmith Press).Widely regarded as one of Ukraine’s most prominent Russian-language poets, Boris Khersonsky is author of seventeen collections of poetry and essays in Russian, and most recently, in Ukrainian.Founding editor of Arrowsmith Press, Askold Melnyczuk, is an award-winning translator and author, most recently of t

On Tuesday, October 17, 2023, the Lannan Center presented a reading by writer and Lannan Visiting Chair, Rabih Alameddine. Introduction by Deborah Tannen, Distinguished University Professor.Rabih Alameddine is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, most recently The Wrong End of the Telescope (Grove Press, 2021), winner of the Pen/Faulkner Prize in 2022. He is also the author of The Angel of History (Grove Press, 2016), winner of the Lambda Literary Award 2017; An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press, 2014), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Hakawati (Knopf, 2008); I, The Divine (W.W. Norton, 2001); Koolaids (Picador, 1999); and a collection of short stories, The Perv (Picador, 1999). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Harold Washington Literary Award in 2018, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 2019, the 2021 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and recently, a finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He was previously th

On Tuesday, October 3, 2023 the Lannan Center presented a reading and conversation featuring writer Leila Aboulela and moderated by Tope Folarin, Lannan Creative Writing Visiting Lecturer. Introduction by Rabih Alameddine, Lannan Visiting Chair.Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese writer whose work has received critical recognition and a high profile for its depiction of the interior lives of Muslim women and its distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality. She is the author of six novels: River Spirit, Bird Summons, Minaret, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Leila was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and her latest story collection, Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was long-listed three times for the Orange Prize, (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). Leila grew u

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023, the Lannan Center presented a reading by poet Arthur Sze. Introduction by Duncan Wu, Raymond Wagner Professor in Literary Studies.Arthur Sze has published eleven books of poetry, including Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award, and The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021). His other books include Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist and The Ginkgo Light (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award. He has also published one book of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon (2001), selected for the Western States Book Award, and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (2010). Sze is the recipient of many honors, including the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the 2021 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award, a Lila Wallace