Conversation & Reading

Writing and Resistance Today: Abdellah Taïa and Chiké Frankie Edozien in Conversation with Mythili Rao

Mon, Apr 9, 2018

6:30 PM–8:00 PM

Rooms 9206 & 9207

Join writers Abdellah Taïa (Morocco/France) and Chiké Frankie Edozien (Nigeria/USA) as they read from recent work and discuss the role of storytelling and journalism in today’s cultural resistance movements. Mythili Rao, producer at The New Yorker Radio Hour, will moderate.

Participant bios:

Abdellah Taïa was born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1973. He is the first Moroccan and Arab writer/filmmaker to publicly declare his homosexuality. The French Editions du Seuil has published seven of his books, including Salvation Army, An Arab Melancholia (both translated into English by Semiotexte), Infidèles, (translated into English by Seven Stories Press), Un pays pour mourir and Celui quiest digne d’être aimé. His novel Le jour du Roi was awarded the prestigious French Prix de Flore in 2010. Salvation Army, his first movie as a director, is adapted from his eponymous novel. The film was selected to Venice Film Festival 2013, TIFF 2013, New Directors 2014 and won many prizes. Semiotexte just translated into English his second book, under the title Another Morocco.

Chiké Frankie Edozien is a Professor of Journalism at New York University, and the author of the journalistic memoir Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man. He was raised in Lagos, Nigeria. A journalist and contributor to the Commonwealth Writers nonfiction anthology, he has traveled the world reporting on HIV/AIDS, particularly among Africans.

Mythili Rao is a producer at The New Yorker Radio Hour. Her book reviews and reporting have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Words Without Borders, and others.

Co-sponsored by Words Without Borders, Belladonna* Series, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

https://vimeo.com/264156224