Friday 24 August 2012 at 2.30 pm
THE OTHER AFRICA
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sefi Atta, Uzodinma Iweala, Majok Tulba, Arnold Zable
Venue: ACMI Cinema 2, CODE 2202
Africa is often seen as a continent of crisis: wars, famine, corruption. Four expat writers, Kwame Anthony Appiah (The Honor Code), Uzodinma Iweala (Our Kind of People), Sefi Atta (News From Home) and Majok Tulba (Beneath the Darkening Sky) talk with Arnold Zable about literature's role in challenging this view. Proudly supported by Melbourne PEN Centre.
Kwame Anthony Appiah was born to a Ghanaian father and an English mother in London and raised in Ghana. He studied philosophy at Cambridge and now teaches at Princeton, having taught previously at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard Universities. He has lectured widely in Africa, Europe and the Americas. His 1992 book In My Father's House won the Herskovitz award of the African Studies Association for the best book published in English on Africa. In 2007, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Appiah is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has chaired the boards of the American Philosophical Association and the American Council of Learned Societies as well as being President of the PEN American Center for three years, ending this spring. In the spring of 2012, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. In addition to his scholarly work, he has written three mystery novels and is planning to start a new novel any day now. His most recent book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, was one of the New York Times Book Review's 100 notable books of 2010.
Uzodinma Iweala is a Nigerian born in the United States. He is currently living in New York City. He is the author of the novel Beasts of No Nation, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His latest book is Our Kind of People, published in 2012.
Sefi Atta was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. She was educated there, in England and the United States. Sefi qualified as a chartered accountant in England and as a CPA in the United States. In 2001, she graduated with a MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She currently lives in Mississippi. Sefi is the author ofEverything Good Will Come, Swallow and News from Home. Her short stories have appeared in journals including Los Angeles Review, Mississippi Review, andWorld Literature Today. They have won prizes from the Zoetrope Short Fiction Contest and the Red Hen Press Short Story Award, and have been finalists for Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award and the Caine Prize for African Literature. In 2004, Sefi was awarded PEN International's David TK Wong Prize, in 2006, the Wole Soyinka Prize for Publishing in Africa, and in 2009, the NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa. Also a playwright, Sefi's radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. In 2011, her stage play The Cost of Living premiered at the Lagos Heritage Festival, and her stage play Hagel auf Zamfara premiered at Theatre Krefeld in Germany. A Bit of Difference is her latest novel.
Born in Sudan Majok Tulba lives in Western Sydney with his wife and children. He is CEO of the charity SudanCare, made a short film that was a finalist at Tropfest, and received a NSW Premier's CAL Literary Centre Fellowship. Majok's novel, Beneath the Darkening Sky, is a vivid and raw portrait of the experience of child soldiers.
Arnold Zable is one of Australia's best-loved storytellers. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and grew up in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton. He has travelled and lived in the USA, India, Papua New Guinea, Europe, Southeast Asia and China, and now lives in Melbourne with his wife and son. Arnold is the award-winning and highly acclaimed author of the memoir Jewels and Ashes (1991) and the bestselling Café Scheherazade (2001), which was recently adapted for the stage. His other books includeThe Fig Tree (2002), Scraps of Heaven (2004) and Sea of Many Returns (2008) and the recent collection of true stories Violin Lessons (2011), which takes the reader on an intimate journey into the lives of people Arnold has met on travels over the last forty years.Arnold is president of the International PEN, Melbourne, and is a human rights advocate. Formerly a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, he speaks and writes with passion about memory and history, displacement and community. His writing has appeared in the Age,Sydney Morning Herald, Monthly and a range of journals.
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