The event is a multi-genre literary roundtable featuring
acclaimed writers of poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction who
have engaged with 9/11 in their work. After reading from their
work, they will participate in a conversation, which will be
moderated by Dohra Ahmad and John Lowney, about the process of
transforming a traumatic collective experience into a lasting work
of art.
The writers who will present include...
Anne Nelson is the author of the 2001 play,
"The Guys" as well as the screenplay for its 2002 award winning
film adaptation. She also wrote the 2006
Off-Broadway play "Savages," based on the true story of war crimes
during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. A professor of
international media at Columbia University and a
Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, she has reported extensively on
media, conflict, and human rights for The New York Times,
The Los Angeles Times, Harper's, BBC, CBC, NPR and
PBS.
Lawrence Joseph is the author of five books of
poetry, most recently Into It and Codes,
Precepts, Biases and Taboos: Poems
1973-1993 and a book of
prose, Lawyerland,all published by Farrar Strauss
Giroux. His latest book of
prose,The Game Changed: Essays and
Other Prose,is forthcoming from the
University of Michigan Press. For his poems and prose, Joseph
has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and
the Guggenheim Foundation. He is currently Tinnelley
Professor of Law at St. John's University School of
Law.
Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of
non-fiction and a novel. His latest book, A Foreigner Carrying
in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, was described by the New
York Times as a "perceptive and soulful" meditation on "the
cultural and human repercussions" of the global war on terror.
Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College.
Kamila Shamsie’s first novel, In the City by
the Sea, was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn
Rhys Prize. Her second, Salt and Saffron, won her a
place on Orange's list of '21 Writers for the 21st Century'. In
1999, Shamsie received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in
Pakistan. Her latest novels are Broken Verses (2005), and
Burnt Shadows (2009), an epic narrative which was
shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.