RTWCS: Ledig House Special

Our next Reading the World Conversation Series event takes place tomorrow and features four international authors currently at the Ledig House, a wonderful residency program for international writers.

The event takes place at 6 p.m. in the Hawkins-Carlson room in University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees library. Totally free, totally open to the public, and totally entertaining. All the details can also be found on this Facebook event page.

And yes—we will record these readings and hopefully at some point Nate and/or E.J. will do that magic editing stuff so that I can link to them here . . . (Actually, we should be able to make all three RTWCS fall events available early next week.)

Here are the bios of the four people who will be reading and talking here tomorrow night:

Susana García Iglesias (Mexico, Fiction)

Born in Mexico City’s historic center, Susana a is the inaugural recipient of the Aura Estrada Prize, which she won for her fiction submission, Barracuda. It was praised by jury president Margo Glantz for “the enormous force and charisma of a risk-taking writing whose fury ignites like pyromania.” Susana has worked as a bartender and dog stylist; her interests include: mixology, photography, old cars, high speed, rock and roll, and literature.

Nir Baram (Israel, Fiction/Nonfiction)

Born in Jerusalem, Nir graduated with an MA in Literature from Tel-Aviv University. He has published four books, and was nominated for the Sapir Prize (The Israeli Booker award) in 2007. Nir won the Prime Minister Award for Hebrew literature in 2010. He serves as editor of the Classical World Wide Series in Am-Oved publishing house and writes for the Ha’aretz Newspaper.

Perihan Mağden (Turkey, Fiction)

Perihan was born in Istanbul. She majored in psychology and traveled extensively in Asia. She published first novel, Messenger Boy Murders, in 1991. Perihan recently left her post writing a regular column for over 12 years. She has five novels that have been translated to twelve languages.

Tom Burke (US, Fiction)

Born in Chicago, Thomas is now the Program Manager of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College. In the past he served as Director of Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya, Assistant Director of SLS in Russia, and as the Event and Promotions Manager at Words without Borders, an online magazine of international literature in translation. He received an MFA from UMASS Amherst and his work has appeared in Tin House and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications, and is forthcoming in the St. Petersburg Review and the Collagist.

So if you’re in the area, you should definitely come out—this is always one of the best RTWCS events . . .