Lannan Center Podcast

On April 7th, 2026, the Lannan Center hosted a poetry reading and talk with Volha Hapeyeva and Valzhyna Mort. Hosted by Carolyn Forché.Volha Hapeyeva (b. in Minsk, Belarus) is a poet, writer, translator, doctor of linguistics, and artist. She writes in Belarusian and German and has received numerous prizes and awards for her work: Wortmeldungen Literature Preis-2022 (Germany), among others. Her poems have been translated into more than 15 languages. She is the author of 14 books in Belarusian and the English poetry book In My Garden of Mutants (2021, Arc Publication) was awarded the English PEN Translates Award. She was a 2019/2020 writer-in-residence in Graz, a fellow of the Writers-in-Exile Program of German PEN, and in 2022\2023 was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.Since 2019, she has lived in Austria and Germany.Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator born in Minsk, Belarus, and she writes in English and Belarusian. She is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyo

On March 31, 2026, Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie joined former NPR host and Princeton visiting professor Razia Iqbal for a conversation about his extraordinary writing life, viewed through the lens of change Rushdie will discuss his latest work, The Eleventh Hour, a quintet of short stories published in November 2025, alongside reflections on his literary journey from early novels exploring postcolonial experience to his recent memoir Knife, which chronicles his recovery from the 2022 attack.Salman Rushdie is the author of 22 books, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, including Languages of Truth. His most recent book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, was a finalist for the 2024 National

On March 26, 2026, Poet Travis Chi Wing Lau, author of What’s Left Is Tender, joined radio host Georgina Godwin for an intimate conversation about his powerful exploration of disability, chronic pain, and family silence.Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his)is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. He received his B.A. in English with a minor in Classical Civilization from the University of California, Los Angeles (2012). He received both his M.A. (2013) and Ph.D. (2018) in English at the University of Pennsylvania. His work is primarily focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture with research and teaching interests in health humanities, disability studies, and the history of medicine.Travis has contributed to numerous publications dedicated to accessible public scholarship like Synapsis, Public Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Lapham’s Quarterly. He also regularly reviews collections of poetry for literary and arts journals like Up the Staircase Quarterly

On March 24, 2026, Dominican-American poet, novelist and essayist, Julia Alvarez read from her latest poetry collection in conversation with radio host Georgina Godwin. The poems in Visitations reflect on change across the arc of decades—family, aging, love, the body, finding voice, and the very act of poetry itself.Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer in residence at Middlebury College. Her work was included in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” Her novel In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read

On Tuesday, February 10, 2026, the Lannan Center hosted a conversation between Mexican novelist Yuri Herrera and Carmen Lamas (Latinx Literary Culture Professor at the University of Virginia).Yuri Herrera is a writer born in Actopan, Hidalgo, México, and he writes in both Spanish and English. His first novel, Trabajos del reino (trans. Kingdom Cons), won the Premio Binacional de Novela Joven 2003 and received the “Otras voces, otros ámbitos” prize for the best novel published in Spain in 2008; his second novel, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (Signs Preceding the End of the World) was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. His third novel is La transmigración de los cuerpos (Transmigration of Bodies). The three novels have been translated into multiple languages and published in English.  In 2016, he shared with translator Lisa Dillman the Best Translated Book Award for the translation of Signs Preceding the End of the World. In 2016, Rice University and Literal Publishing published Talud, a collec

On Tuesday, January 20th, the Lannan Center hosted a reading and discussion by American fiction writer Jenny Offill, hosted by Lannan Visiting Chair Rabih Alameddine. Jenny Offill is an acclaimed American fiction writer whose debut novel, Last Things (1999), was named a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the LA Times First Book Award. The New York Times named her second novel, Dept. of Speculation, one of the 10 Best Books of 2014. Weather: A Novel was published in 2020 and lauded by the Boston Globe as “tiny in size but immense in scope, radically disorienting yet reassuringly humane, strikingly eccentric and completely irresistible.” Her critical work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review and Slate. She is coeditor, with Elissa Schappell, of the anthologies Money Changes Everything and The Friend Who Got Away; author of a number of children’s books; and subject of a February 2020 feature in the New York Times Magazine, “How to Write Fiction when the Planet is Falling Apart.” Honors incl

On Tuesday, November 18th, the Lannan Center hosted a special tribute evening honoring Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, featuring writers Nukoma wa Ngugi, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, and Helon Habila. Moderated by Lannan Visiting Lecturer Tope Folarin.Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938–2025) was an award-winning novelist, playwright, and essayist from Kenya whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. Born in 1938, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s early work was written in English under the name of James Ngugi. Novels such as The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), and Petals of Blood (1977) established his reputation as the foremost writer in post-Independence Kenya. In the 1970s, he abandoned English for Gikuyu and Swahili, writing his critical apologia on this subject in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986).Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, October 21st, the Lannan Center hosted a reading and discussion by Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Fady Joudah is the author of […], a 2024 finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize. He has also published six collections of poems: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received the Jackson Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbi

On Tuesday, September 30th, the Lannan Center hosted a book launch for Rabih Alameddine's The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother), hosted by Tope Folarin, Lannan Visiting Lecturer.Rabih Alameddine is the Lannan Foundation's Visiting Chair and author of seven critically acclaimed novels, most recently The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother), winner of the 2025 National Book Award. He is also author of The Wrong End of the Telescope (Grove Press, 2021), winner of the Pen/Faulkner Prize in 2022; The Angel of History (Grove Press, 2016), winner of the Lambda Literary Award 2017; An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press, 2014), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Hakawati (Knopf, 2008); I, The Divine (W.W. Norton, 2001); Koolaids (Picador, 1999); and a collection of short stories, The Perv (Picador, 1999). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Harold Washington Literary Award in 2018, the John Dos Passos Pri

On Tuesday, April 8th, the Lannan Center hosted a reading by award-winning poet Roger Reeves, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Roger Reeves is the author of Dark Days: Fugitive Essays (Graywolf, 2023) and Best Barbarian (W.W. Norton & Co., 2022), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Tracy K. Smith called it “a revelation and a form of reparation.” His debut collection is King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), a Library Journal  Best Poetry Book of the year, and winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, two

On Thursday, March 27th, the Lannan Center welcomed award-winning author and journalist Omar El Akkad for a conversation with New York Times contributor Aida Alami as part of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate".Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade, he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists.His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ, and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Book

On Thursday, March 27th, the Lannan Center welcomed actress and activist Susan Sarandon to begin the final night of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate", with a reading from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The reading was followed by a conversation with biologist Dr. Dino J. Martins, moderated by author Aminatta Forna. Dr. Dino J. Martins is internationally respected for his evolutionary biology and entomological research, biodiversity conservation work, and natural history writing, and he is widely known as one of Kenya’s leading biological scientists. Dr. Martins graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from Indiana University in 1999 and worked on his M.Sc. in Botany at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2004. He earned his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 2011 before joining TBI as a postdoctoral fellow at Stony Brook University. Dr. Martins has taught in the TBI Origins field school every semester it has been offered si

On Wednesday, March 26th, the Lannan Center welcomed human rights and environmental justice activist Kumi Naidoo for a conversation with Climate Rights International Founder Brad Adams as part of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate".Kumi Naidoo is a prominent South African human rights and environmental justice activist. At the age of fifteen, he organized school boycotts against the apartheid educational system in South Africa. His courageous actions made him a target for the Security Police, leading to his exile in the United Kingdom, where he remained until 1990. Upon his return to South Africa, Kumi played a pivotal role in the legalization of the African National Congress in his home province of KwaZulu Natal.Currently, Kumi serves as a Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN). He holds the position of distinguished visiting lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and is a Professor of Practice at th

On Tuesday, March 25th, the Lannan Center welcomed award-winning author Amitav Ghosh for a conversation with journalist Razia Iqbal as part of the center's annual symposium, this year entitled "Writing Climate".Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The Great Derangement; Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, appeared in 2016. Gun Island was released in September 2019. Ghosh’s first-ever book in verse, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, was published in February 2021. His latest books, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, was released in October 2021, and Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories was released in February 2024.

On Tuesday, February 25th, the Lannan Center welcomed award-winning poet Dana Levin for a reading, hosted by Carolyn Forché. Dana Levin is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Now Do You Know Where You Are (2022), a New York Times Notable Book and NPR “Book We Love.” Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive numerous honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, Wedding Day, in 2005, and in 2011, Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Banana Palace, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Rilke Prize.Levin’s poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, and Poetry. Her fellowships and awards include those from the National Endowment for the

On Tuesday, February 4th, the Lannan Center welcomed renowned poet, essayist, professor of Classics, and translator Anne Carson for a reading, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Anne Carson was born in Toronto, Ontario, on June 21, 1950. She attended St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto and, despite leaving twice, received her BA in 1974, her MA in 1975 and her PhD in 1981. Since bursting onto the international poetry scene in 1987 with her long poem “Kinds of Water,” Carson has published numerous books of poetry, including Wrong Norma (New Directions, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Award and long-listed for the National Books Critics Circle Award; Float (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016); Red Doc> (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013); The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Autobiography of Red (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); and Short Talks (Brick Books, 1992).Also a Classics scholar, Carson is the translator of Electra (Oxford Universi

On Tuesday, January 21st, the Lannan Center presented a reading featuring poets Eduardo C. Corral and Tyree Daye, hosted by Carolyn Forché.Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. He’s the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at Washington University at St. Louis.Tyree Daye was raised in Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the author of the poetry collections a little bump in the earth (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), and River Hymns (American Poetry Review, 2017), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. A Cave Canem fellow and a Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellow, Daye is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, a

On Tuesday, October 22nd, the Lannan Center presented an evening with award-winning author Aleksandar Hemon, hosted by Rabih Alameddine, Lannan Visiting Chair.Aleksandar Hemon is most recently the author of The World and All That It Holds (2023). He is also the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and three collections of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. His other works include two books of nonfiction, My Parents: An Introduction and The Book of My Lives, the novel The Making of Zombie Wars, journalism, screenplays, and content for the Netflix original show Sense8. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon visited Chicago in 1992, intending to stay for a matter of months. While he was there, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. Hemon wrote his first story in English in 1995. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fell

On Tuesday, October 1st, the Lannan Center presented an evening with Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, hosted by Tope Folarin, Lannan Creative Writing Visiting Lecturer.Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan author from Colombo. He is the author of two novels: Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010), which won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize, and the Gratiaen Prize, and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort of Books, 2022), which won the Booker Prize. His works have been translated into 26 languages. Karunatilaka is also the author of several children’s books, dedicated and inspired by his own children.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

On Tuesday, September 24th, the Lannan Center presented a reading by Duncan Wu, Raymond Wagner Professor in Literary Studies, from his debut collection of poems Origin Myths (Shearsman, 2024).Duncan Wu began his career as a Fellow by Special Election at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the British Academy, in 1991. In 1995 he was appointed Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where he became Professor of Romantic Studies in 1999. In 2000 he was appointed University Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in English at St Catherine's College.  In January 2008, he left Oxford and came to Georgetown as a Professor of English. He has authored or edited a number of books, principally in the areas of Romantic Studies and Contemporary British Drama. These include Romanticism: An Anthology (four editions, 1994, 1998, 2007, 2012); A Companion to Romanticism (1998); Wordsworth's Readi