Lannan Center Podcast

On April 11, 2023, The Lannan Center hosted a reading and talk featuring poets Camille T. Dungy and Major Jackson.Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy's poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry: Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems; The Absurd Man; Roll Deep; Holding Company; Hoops; and Leaving Saturn, which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry. He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry in 2019. Jackson is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On February 28, 2023, The Lannan Center hosted a reading and talk featuring poets Kazim Ali and Fanny Howe.Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One's Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.Fanny Howe is the author of over twenty books of poetry and prose including Love and I (2019), The Needle's Eye (2016), Second Childhood (2014), Come and See (2011), On the Ground (2004), Gone (2003), Selected Poems (2000), Forged (1999), Q (1998), One Crossed Out (1997), O'Clock (1995), and The End (1992). The recipient of the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Selected Poems (2000), she has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts and the Village Voice, as well as fellowships from the Bunting Institute and the MacArthur Colony. Howe was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001. A creative writing teacher of note, Howe has lectured at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is Professor Emerita of Writing and Literature at the University of California, San Diego.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

A Conversation with Mecca Jamilah Sullivan (Author of Big Girl) and Artist Baseera Khan, moderated by Prof. Nadia Brown.If a body could speak, what would it say? The way our bodies are viewed and categorized is not always within our power. A writer and a visual artist reflect upon representing, in words and images, the experiences which come with existing in bodies: black, brown, queer, female, Muslim, big – defined by systems of power beyond our control.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

 A Discussion with NPR's Diane Rehm and Dr. Ewan GoligherFollowed by a Panel Discussion with Dr. Lydia Dugdale (Columbia University), Dr. Ewan Goligher (University of Toronto), Diane Rehm (NPR), and Dr. Katalin Roth (George Washington University), moderated by journalist John Donvan. Should we be able to choose how and when we die? And what are the real-life consequences of laws that allow for medical assistance in dying? An international panel of physicians, writers, and ethicists set the stage for a discussion of philosophical, practical, theological, and personal implications of medical assistance in dying. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

 A Panel Discussion with Rabih Alameddine (The Angel of History), Meghan O'Rourke (The Invisible Kingdom), and Dr. Daniel Marchalik, moderated by Tope Folarin. More than just a sickness, pandemics are the place where illness meets politics. Today we live in the aftermath of two great pandemics, the AIDS pandemic of the 1980's and the COVID-19 pandemic. How has our society and how have we been changed by those events? What is the role of the writer as activist or custodian of memory in the story of the aftermath?Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

A Conversation with Meghan O'Rourke, Author of The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, January 24th, 2023, The Lannan Center hosted a reading and conversation with poet Patricia Smith,Patricia Smith is the award-winning author of eight critically-acclaimed books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (Triquarterly Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow (CityFiles Press, 2015), a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press, 2006), Close to Death (Zoland Books, 1998), Big Towns Big Talk (Zoland Books, 2002), Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha, 1991);  the children's book Janna and the Kings (Lee & Low, 2013), and the history Africans in America (Mariner, 1999), a companion book to the award-winning PBS series. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American Poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories. She co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology—New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017), and edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir (Akashic Books, 2012). She is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, a former fellow at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition's history. Smith is a Distinguished Professor for the City University of New York, a visiting professor at Princeton University and an instructor in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, November 15, 2022, the Lannan Center hosted a reading and conversation with writer Laila Lalami and moderated by Aminatta Forna. Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of five books, most recently, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, which was shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Her other books include, The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation and is currently a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On November 1, 2022 the Lannan Center hosted a reading and talk featuring writer Chen Chen and moderated by Carolyn Forché. Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. He lives with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, October 4, 2022, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring writer Seán Hewit. Hosted by Professor Cóilín Parsons, Director of Global Irish Studies.Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire, is published by Jonathan Cape. He is a book critic for The Irish Times and teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire, won The Laurel Prize, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their “30 under 30”  artists in Ireland. He is also the winner of a Northern Writers' Award, the Resurgence Prize, and an Eric Gregory Award. His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism is published with Oxford University Press (2021). His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, is published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA (2022).Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, the Lannan Center presented a special evening featuring Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. Hosted by Lannan Center Director Aminatta Forna. Introduction by Lahra Smith, Director of the African Studies Program.Abdulrazak Gurnah is the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His most recent novel, AFTERLIVES is forthcoming from Riverhead Books in August 2022. He is the author of nine previous novels, including Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the LA Times Book Award), and Desertion. Born and raised in Zanzibar, he is Professor Emeritus of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent; he lives in Canterbury, England.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, April 12, 2022, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets Victoria Chang and Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Hosted by Carolyn Forché. Introductions by Lannan Fellows Max Zhang and Hiruni Herat.  About Victoria ChangVictoria Chang's new book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything is forthcoming (Copper Canyon Press and Corsair Books in the U.K.). Her nonfiction book, Dear Memory (Milkweed Editions), was published in 2021. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), her most recent poetry book, was named a New York Times Notable Book, a Time Must-Read Book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also longlisted for a National Book Award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and lives in Los Angeles and is a Core Faculty member within Antioch's low-residency MFA Program.About Rachel Eliza GriffithsRachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. Her hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Seeing the Body (W.W. Norton), was published in 2020. Other poetry collections by Griffiths include Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books, 2015), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press, 2011), Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2011), and Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books, 2010). Griffiths is a recipient of fellowships including Cave Canem, Kimbilio, Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo. Her forthcoming debut novel, Promise, will be published by Random House.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

AboutThe United States: exceptional, individual, shining city on the hill, home of democracy, land of the free, of the “American Dream” and the pursuit of happiness. A national narrative is composed of ideas made into stories. And these stories are powerful. In a time of division can Americans agree on a common story or make space for multiple narratives?Panelists: Rabih Alameddine, Aleksandar Hemon, Fathali Moghaddam, and Patricia Smith. Chaired by John FreemanMusic: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

AboutAs the calls for social and racial justice grow, could the United States follow the example of South Africa and other conflict-affected nations and engage in a national, formal reconciliation process?Panelists: Elham Atashi, Tope Folarin, Aleksandar Hemon, and Tim Phillips. Chaired by David SmithMusic: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

AboutWage inequality in the United States is approaching the extreme level that prevailed prior to the Great Depression, creating new social classes: the precariat (those on short term or zero hours contracts without benefits) and the one percent. With disparity widening––and anger building among some of the dispossessed––can the American Dream endure?Panelists: Sarah Anderson, Amy Goldstein, and John Freeman. Chaired by Tope FolarinMusic: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

AboutWe write to make sense of the world around us. From war and political violence to natural disasters and pandemics – how have writers of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction responded to crises in their nation's history? Panelists: Rabih Alameddine, Aleksandar Hemon, and Patricia Smith; Chaired by Jacki LydenMusic: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

AboutIf the lion does not tell his story, the hunter will. The history of the United States, as it is currently taught, is being contested like never before. Is it possible to reconcile differing perspectives on America's national narrative?Panelists: Mark Muller, Elizabeth Rule, and Clint Smith; Chaired by Adam Rothman.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Keynote Speech by Melody C. Barnes: "In Search of an Inclusive America: Culture, Politics, and the Narratives That Define Us" on March 22, 2022.About Melody C. BarnesMelody Barnes is executive director of the University of Virginia's Karsh Institute of Democracy. She is also the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs and a senior fellow at the Karsh Center for Law & Democracy.Ms. Barnes was Assistant to the President and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Administration of President Barack Obama. Prior to her tenure in the Obama Administration, she was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barnes is narrator and host of the podcast, LBJ and the Great Society and co-editor of Community Wealth Building & The Reconstruction of American Democracy.  Ms. Barnes earned her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she graduated with honors in history and her J.D. from the University of Michigan.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Clips taken from past event "Is There Such a Thing as American Exceptionalism?” held at Beyond Borders Scotland on August 29, 2021.Music: AudioInfinity — "Inspirational Piano" — Provided by Jamendo.

Clips taken from past event The View From Abroad: “What Can America Learn from the Experience of Other Nations at a Time of Crisis?” held on Crowdcast on March 18, 2021.Music: Soundside (royalty free music) — "Violin Inspiration" — Provided by Jamendo.

On February 8th, 2022, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets Mark Nowak. Moderated by Carolyn Forché.About Mark NowakMark Nowak is the author of four poetry collections: Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020), Coal Mountain Elementary (2009), Shut Up Shut Down (2004), and Revenants (2000). Also a playwright, essayist, social critic, and labor activist, Nowak's writing documents the hardships and injustices faced by the global working class. Nowak is the recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism from Split This Rock and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has taught at St. Catherine University and Washington College, where he also worked as director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House. He has also led poetry workshops for workers and trade unions in Belgium, the Netherlands, the U.K., the U.S., and South Africa. He is currently Professor of English at Manhattanville College and the founding director, in collaboration with PEN America, of the Worker Writers School.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On January 25th, 2022, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets Valzhyna Mort and Michael Prior. Moderated by Carolyn Forché.About Valzhyna Mort Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press 2008), Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press 2011) and, mostly recently, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020). Mort is a recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Amy Clampitt residency, and the Civitella Raineri residency. Her work has been honored with the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry and the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, New Yorker, Poetry, Poetry Review, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Granta, Gulf Coast, White Review, and many more. With Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, Mort co-edited Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. Mort teaches at Cornell University and writes in English and Belarusian. About Michael PriorMichael Prior is a writer and teacher born in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of two books of poems: Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House, 2020), which won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the BC & Yukon Book Prizes' Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Model Disciple (Véhicule Press, 2016). Prior is the recent recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center, the Jerome Foundation, and Hawthornden Literary Retreat. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, the Sewanee Review, PN Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English and an ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow at Macalester College.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On November 30th, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring author Tope Folarin Introduction by Aminatta Forna.About Tope FolarinTope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, D.C. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and was shortlisted once again in 2016. He was also recently named to the Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40. Folarin was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of A Particular Kind of Black Man (Simon & Schuster, 2019), and is currently the Lannan Creative Writing Visiting Lecturer at Georgetown University and Director of the Institute for Policy Studies.From A Particular Kind of Black ManShe told me I could serve her in heaven.She accompanied me to school each day. School was about a mile away, and a few hundred feet into my trek, just as my family's apartment building drifted out of view behind me, she would appear at my side.I don't remember how she looked. Memory often summons a generic figure in her place: an elderly white woman with frizzled gray hair, slightly bent over, a smile featuring an assortment of gaps and silver linings. I do remember her touch, however—it felt cool and papery, disarmingly comfortable on the hottest days of fall. She would often pat my head as we walked together, and a penetrating silence would cancel the morning sounds around us. I felt comfortable, protected somehow, in her presence. She never walked all the way to school with me, but her parting words were always the same:“Remember, if you are a good boy here on earth, you can serve me in heaven.”I was five years old. Her words sounded magical to me. Vast and alluring. I didn't know her, I barely knew her name, but the offer she held out to me each morning seemed far too generous to dismiss lightly. In class I would think about what servitude in heaven would be like. I imagined myself carrying buckets of water for her on streets of gold, rubbing her feet as angels sang praises in the background. I imagined that I'd have my own heavenly shack. I'd have time to do my own personal heavenly things as well.How else would I get to heaven?One day I told my father about her offer. We were talking about heaven, a favorite subject of his, and I mentioned that I already had a place there. “I've already found someone to serve,” I said.“What do you mean?”Dad smiled warmly at me. I felt his love. I repeated myself:“Daddy, I'm going to heaven.”“And how are you going to get there?”I told him about the old lady, my heavenly shack, the streets of gold. My father stared at me a moment, grief and sadness surging briefly to the surface of his face. And then anger. He leaned forward, stared into my eyes.“Listen to me now. The only person you will serve in heaven is God. You will serve no one else.”Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On November 9th, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring author Aminatta Forna and editor John Freeman. Introduction by David Gewanter.About Aminatta FornaAminatta Forna was born in Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Great Britain and spent periods of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the award-winning author of the novels Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water, and most recently the essay collection, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. Forna is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award 2011, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award the Liberaturpreis in Germany and the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, and was made OBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours 2017. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University. About John FreemanJohn Freeman is the editor of Freeman's, a literary annual of new writing, and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as Tales of Two Americas, an anthology about income inequality in America, and Tales of Two Planets, an anthology of new writing about inequality and the climate crisis globally. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Maps and The Park. His work is translated into more than twenty languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he teaches writing at New York University.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On October 26th, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring Douglas Stuart and Maureen Corrigan. Introduction by Aminatta Forna.About Douglas StuartDouglas Stuart is a Scottish-American author. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker Prize. It is published by Grove Atlantic in the US and Picador in the UK, and is to be translated into thirty-four languages. He wrote Shuggie Bain over a ten year period and is currently at work on his second novel, to be published in 2022. His short stories, Found Wanting, and The Englishman, were published in The New Yorker magazine. His essay, Poverty, Anxiety, and Gender in Scottish Working-Class Literature was published by Lit Hub. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has an MA from the Royal College of Art in London and since 2000 he has lived and worked in New York City.About Maureen CorriganMaureen Corrigan is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism in the Department of English. She is an expert in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the literature of New York City, American detective fiction, American Women's Autobiography, the work of American Public Intellectuals in the 20th Century, and 19th century British poetry and prose. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in the social criticism of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and William Morris. She received her B.A. in English from Fordham University. For the past 31 years, Corrigan has been the weekly book critic on the Peabody Award-winning NPR program, ''Fresh Air.'' Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On October 12th, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poet Jericho Brown. Introduction by Carolyn Forché.About Jericho BrownJericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown's first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On September 21st, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring Sofi Oksanen. Moderated by Lannan Center Director, Aminatta Forna. Cosponsored by the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative, the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, the Global and Comparative Literature Program, the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics,  the Women's and Gender Studies Program, and the Women's Center at Georgetown University.About Sofi OksanenSofi Oksanen is a Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright. She has received numerous prizes for her work, including the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize, the Prix Femina Étranger, the Budapest Grand Prize, the European Book Prize, and the Nordic Council Literature Prize. She lives in Helsinki. Translated from the Finnish by Owen Witesman.About Aminatta FornaAminatta Forna is the award-winning author of the novels Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water, and most recently the essay collection, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On April 20, 2021, we held a virtual reading and conversation with Irenosen Okojie, winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. Moderated by Prof. Lahra Smith, Director of African Studies Program.Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian-British writer. She is the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize For Fiction for her story, “Grace Jones.” Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International First Book Award. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have appeared internationally in publications including Salt's Best British Short Stories 2017, Kwani? and The Year's Best Weird Fiction. She was named at the London Short Story Festival by Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri OBE as a dynamic writing talent to watch and featured in the Evening Standard Magazine as one of London's exciting new authors. Her short story collection Speak Gigantular, published by Jacaranda Books was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her collection of stories Nudibranch which includes her AKO Caine Prize winning “Grace Jones” is published by Dialogue Books.Lahra Smith is Director of the African Studies Program at Georgetown University. Smith is a Political Scientist with a particular interest in African politics, migration and refugees, and citizenship and equality. Her book, Making Citizens in Africa: Ethnicity, Gender and National Identity in Ethiopia, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. She teaches courses on migration, women and politics and theory and policy in Africa. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On April 13, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring  Carolyn Forché. Moderated by Penn Szittya of the Lannan Foundation.Carolyn Forché's first volume of poetry, Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, was followed by The Country Between Us, The Angel of History, and Blue Hour. In March, 2020, Penguin Press published her fifth collection of poems, In the Lateness of the World. She is also the author of the memoir What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Press, 2019), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. She has translated Mahmoud Darwish, Claribel Alegria, and Robert Desnos. Her international anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” In 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award for her human rights advocacy and the preservation of memory and culture. She is one of the first poets to receive the Wyndham Campbell Prize from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and recently received a Lannan Award for Poetry. She is a University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.Penn Szittya is the former Chair of the English Department at Georgetown University, where he specialized in medieval poetics and social practice. He also taught at Emory, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and Boston University. He helped launch the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On March 18, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring author Salman Rushdie, as part of "THIS LAND" the 2021 Lannan Center Symposium. Moderated by BBC's Razia Iqbal.About Salman RushdieSalman Rushdie is the author of fourteen novels, most recently Quichotte, The Golden House, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. His book Midnight’s Children was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and the Best of the Booker in 2008. He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and four works of non-fiction – Joseph Anton – A Memoir, Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and Step Across This Line. A Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, Rushdie has received, among other honors, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (twice), the Writers’ Guild Award, the James Tait Black Prize, and a U.S. National Arts Award. He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities, is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T, and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University. Currently, Rushdie is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.About Razia IqbalRazia Iqbal is a presenter for BBC News: she is one of the main hosts of Newshour, the flagship news and current affairs program on BBC World Service radio, which is broadcast around the world including on more than 400 NPR stations in the U.S. She also regularly presents The World Tonight on the BBC's national network, Radio 4. Iqbal was the BBC's arts correspondent for a decade, during which she travelled around the world covering arts and culture for radio and television news. She has been a journalist with the BBC for nearly three decades, has worked as a political reporter, and as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. She covered the 2016 Presidential campaign in the U.S.; the Turkish and German elections and has travelled in India and Pakistan making programs for radio and television. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On March 18, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar on the subject The View From Abroad: "What Can America Learn from the Experience of Other Nations at a Time of Crisis?" This was the launch event of "Beyond Identity: Reimagining the American Narrative," the Lannan Seminars at Georgetown University, and featured Aleksandar Hemon, Monica McWilliams, Ebrahim Rasool, and Elif Shafak. This event was moderated by BBC's Razia Iqbal. Hosted in association with Beyond Conflict and Beyond Borders Scotland. Cosponsored by the Conflict Resolution Program, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.About the Series “Beyond Identity: Reimagining the American Narrative”Present-day America is suffering from an identity crisis. Americans are raised to believe that democracy, freedom, and opportunity are the values deeply embedded in the nation’s character and practice. Yet, millions of Americans who have spent centuries striving towards equality under the  historic burden of racism, dealing with poverty or the absence of opportunity, might beg to disagree. To use a peacemaking approach is to focus on interests rather than positions, to refocus opposing groups on shared goals. But those goals must be grounded in a shared understanding of the past as the anchor to a shared vision for the future. America is at a reckoning point, in need of reappraisal. The standard response to what constitutes American identity has been: “the principles of liberty, equality, individualism, representative government, and private property”. But how does this character composition  comport with the demons of her past and present? What is to become America’s new narrative? Of her new, more truthful, identity born of both pride and pain?For more information about this series, please visit our website.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On March 16, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, as part of "THIS LAND" the 2021 Lannan Center Symposium. Moderated by poet Carolyn Forché.About Joy HarjoIn 2019, Joy Harjo was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo is an internationally known award-winning poet, writer, performer, and saxophone player of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the United States Artist Fellowship.About Carolyn ForchéCarolyn Forché is the former Director of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice and a University Professor in the Department of English at Georgetown University. She is most recently the author of the poetry collection In the Lateness of the World: Poems (Penguin, 2020) and the memoir What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Random House, 2019).  She has been a human rights activist for over thirty years.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On February 9, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring Shane McCrae and Vievee Francis. Introductions by Lannan Fellows Joshua Kim and Renny Simone. Moderated by Carolyn Forché.Shane McCrae is the author of seven books of poetry, including Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020); In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015), winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.Vievee Francis was born in West Texas. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan in 2009, and she received a Rona Jaffe Award the same year. She is the author of Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books, 2015), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award; Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006). The poet Adrian Matejka describes her poems as “revelations—of memory, of dust, of the cotton and marginalia strung together to make a history.” The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Kresge Foundation, Francis currently serves as an editor for Callaloo and teaches English and creative writing at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On January 26, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring Javier Zamora and Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Introductions by Lannan Fellows Dennese Mae Javier and Nohora Arrieta Fernandez. Moderated by Carolyn Forché.Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. His father fled El Salvador when he was a year old; and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). In 1999, Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually the Sonoran Desert. After a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Javier managed to make it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants. His first full-length collection, Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), explores how immigration and the civil war have impacted his family. About Natalie Scenters-ZapicoNatalie Scenters-Zapico is a poet, educator, and activist from the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, USA and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. She is the author of Lima :: Limón (Copper Canyon Press 2019) and The Verging Cities (Colorado State University 2015). Her poems have been published and anthologized in a wide range of nationally and internationally distributed journals including POETRY, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and Best American Poetry 2015. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On November 17, 2020, the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring Carmen Giménez Smith and José Olivarez. Introduced by Aminatta Forna and moderated by English Department Chair Ricardo Ortíz and Professor Elizabeth Velez. Carmen Giménez Smith is most recently the author of Be Recorder (2020), which was shortlisted for both the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Her 2013 collection Milk and Filth, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA.José Olivarez's debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On October 20, 2020, the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring Valeria Luiselli in conversation with Aminatta Forna. Introduced by Lakshmi Krishnan. Valeria Luiselli's recent novel, Lost Children Archive was a finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and long-listed for the 2019 Booker Prize, and has been named a best book of 2019 by Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Vulture, and Time. Lost Children Archive sits beside Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, Luiselli’s ground-breaking book-length essay that has become a touchstone text for those looking to facilitate meaningful and informed conversations around the immigration crisis. Luiselli is also the author of the novels The Story of My Teeth and Faces in the Crowd, and Sidewalks, an essay collection. She is the recipient of a 2019 Macarthur “Genius Grant” and her works have been recognized by the National Book Critics Circle, The National Book Foundation, The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. She is a writer in residence at Bard College in New York. Aminatta Forna is a novelist, memoirist, and essayist. She was born in Scotland and raised between Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. She is the award-winning author of the novels Happiness (2018), The Hired Man (2013), The Memory of Love (2011), and Ancestor Stones (2006). She is also the author of the memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water (2002). Her honors include a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2011, and a Hurston Wright Legacy Award, among others. Forna is the current Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On September 29, 2020 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring Susan Choi in Conversation with Maureen Corrigan. Introduction by Aminatta Forna.Susan Choi is most recently the author of Trust Exercise (2019), which won the National Book Award for fiction, and her first book for children, Camp Tiger (2019). Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010 she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she teaches fiction writing at Yale and lives in Brooklyn.Maureen Corrigan is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism in the Department of English at Georgetown University. For the past 31 years, Corrigan has been the weekly book critic on the Peabody Award-winning NPR program, ''Fresh Air.'' She is also a Mystery Columnist for The Washington Post and publishes regularly on NPR on-line and The Wall Street Journal. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On May 18, 2020, author and 2019 Booker Prize Winner Bernardine Evaristo was interviewed by NPR's Maureen Corrigan (The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University) via Zoom. We apologize for the quality of the sound during the interview, which was made under COVID-19 conditions.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On February 25, 2020, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets John Murillo and Tina Chang. Introduction by Patricia Guzman.John Murillo is the author of the poetry collections Up Jump the Boogie (2010), which was a finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2020. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Court Green, Ninth Letter, and Ploughshares, and is forthcoming in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African-American Poetry. A graduate of New York University’s MFA program in creative writing, he is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.Tina Chang is the author of the poetry collections Hybrida (2019), Of Gods & Strangers (2011), and Half-Lit Houses (2004). She is co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (2008). Her poems have appeared in American Poet, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and The New York Times and anthologized in Identity Lessons, Poetry Nation, Asian American Literature, and Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, among others. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, and the Van Lier Foundation. Chang is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, the first woman named to this position, and she currently teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On February 18, 2020, the Lannan Center presented "Power and Language," a special event with Caine Prize winning writer Lesley Nneka Arimah. Welcome: Aminatta Forna (Director of the Lannan Center, Georgetown University). Introduction: Scott Taylor (Director of the African Studies Program, Georgetown University).Lesley Nneka Arimah is the author of “Skinned,” winner of the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing; What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky (2017), her debut short story collection; and “Light,” winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa. What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky was chosen for the New York Times/PBS book club and won both the 2017 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the 2017 Kirkus Prize. Arimah holds a BA in English from Florida State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University. Currently, Arimah is a 2019 United States Artist Fellow in Writing living in Las Vegas.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On January 21, 2020, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poet Terrance Hayes. Terrance Hayes is the author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins (Penguin, 2018), a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry; To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018); How to Be Drawn (2015); Lighthead (2010), which won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. An artist-in-residence at New York University, Hayes currently resides in New York City.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On December 5, 2019, the Lannan Center presented a special event featuring author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. This event was introduced by Aminatta Forna and moderated by Marie Arana.Juan Gabriel Vásquez is the author of numerous novels, including The Shape of the Ruins (2018), which was shortlisted for the 2019 International Man Booker Prize; Reputations (2013), a New York Times Best Book of the Year; and The Sound of Things Falling (2011), a National Bestseller and winner of the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Vásquez’s novels have been published in twenty-five languages worldwide. After sixteen years in France, Belgium, and Spain, he now lives in Bogotá.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On September 24, 2019, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets Ilya Kaminsky and John James. Introduced by Aminatta Forna. Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo, 2004). He has also co-edited and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Foundation’s Fellowship and the NEA Fellowship. Currently, he holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta.John James is the author of The Milk Hours, selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and published in 2019 by Milkweed Editions. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Best American Poetry 2017, and elsewhere, and his work has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Academy of American Poets, and Georgetown’s Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of California, Berkeley.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On April 23, 2019, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poet Nikky Finney. Introduced by Aminatta Forna. Nikky Finney is the author of the poetry collections Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books, 2011), winner of the 2011 National Book Award; The World Is Round (InnerLight Publishing, 2003); Rice (Sister Vision, 1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (W. Morrow, 1985). She has been a faculty member at Cave Canem, a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, and professor for twenty-three years at the University of Kentucky. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.