S&F Literary Spotlight: Chinelo Okparanta and Akwaeke Emezi
Join award-winning writers Chinelo Okparanta, author of Under the Udala Trees and Happiness Like Water, and Akwaeke Emezi, author of Freshwater, for a reading and conversation on literary considerations of history, archives, and memory, moderated by Yvette Christiansë.
This conversation is part of the 44th annual Scholar and Feminist Conference, The Politics and Ethics of the Archive on February 8-9, 2019. For more information about the conference, visit the conference page.
Registration information
If you have already registered for the S&F Conference, please register for the literary spotlight separately. Your registration assists BCRW in preparing for the appropriate numbers of people in attendance. Registration is preferred but not required.
About the Speakers
Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and video artist based in liminal spaces and a 2018 National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35’ honoree. Their autobiographical debut novel FRESHWATER was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and has been translated into six languages. Their first young adult novel, PET, will be published in 2019 by Knopf; their second adult novel, THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. Their writing has been published by T Magazine, Dazed, Buzzfeed, The Cut, and Granta Online, among others.
Chinelo Okparanta is the author of Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Trees. She is the winner of two Lambda Literary Awards and an O. Henry Prize. Other honors include finalist selections for the International DUBLIN Literary Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award as well as the Etisalat Prize for Literature. She has been nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the NAACP Image Award in Fiction, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2017.
Yvette Christiansë is Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature at Barnard College. She is a scholar as well as an award winning poet, novelist, and librettist. She is the author of Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics (Fordham University Press 2013), poetry collections including Imprendehora (published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press 2009) and Castaway (Duke University Press, 1999), and award-winning novel Unconfessed (published Other Press, 2006; Kwela Books, 2007; Querido, 2007). Together with Syrian-born, Polish-citizen composer Zaid Jabri, she and co-librettist (and anthropologist, filmmaker) Rosalind Morris of Columbia University, have been working since 2012 to bring to life the English translation of Abdulrahmin Munif’s Cities of Salt (translated by Peter Theroux). On 22 July 2015, the Royal Opera House showcased three scenes and an intermezzo as part of the Shubbak Festival.
Books
Please visit the book tables in the Diana Center to browse and buy books by our speakers. Your purchases will support Word Up! Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria, a volunteer-run book store in Washington Heights.
Accessibility information
The venue is accessible to people with mobility and hearing disabilities. ASL interpretation will be available provided by All Hand in Motion. Please contact BCRW for additional access needs.
Thank you to our co-sponsors
Barnard College
Digital Humanities Center
Library and Archives
Office of Student Life
Office of the Provost
Africana Studies Department
American Studies Department
English Department
First-Year Writing
Psychology Department
Religion Department
Urban Studies Program
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department
Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies
Columbia University
Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Institute for Research in African-American Studies
Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Center for the Study of Social Difference
MFA Writing Program
Religion Department
NYU
Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
And
Apogee Journal
Akwaeke Emezi Image credit: Elizabeth Wirija