The University of Connecticut Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce that author Ayad Akhtar will visit Storrs to lecture and read at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, March 11, in the Dodd Center’s Konover Auditorium.
Akhtar’s critically acclaimed coming-of-age novel, American Dervish, has been embraced around the world for the richness of its Muslim American characters and their everyday lives, earning Akhtar a place alongside today’s most compelling storytellers. As author and playwright of the stage play Disgraced, Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Jeff Equity Award for Best New Play in 2012.
Born in New York City, Akhtar was raised in Milwaukee. After earning degrees in Theater and Film Directing from Brown and Columbia University, he began to write a myriad of screenplays, novels, and dramas. As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. He has received commissions from Lincoln Center and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
A Washington Post review of American Dervish claims that “Akhtar’s poignant and wise debut announces the arrival of a generous new voice in American fiction.”
The reading, co-sponsored by the U Conn Creative Writing Program and the Aetna Chair of Writing, is free and open to the public. The Konover Auditorium in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center is located behind the Homer Babbidge Library at 405 Babbidge Road. For more information, please visit the Creative Writing Program website at www.creativewriting.uconn.edu
Other sponsors include:
Asian American Cultural Center
Student Activities
Office of Vice Provost for Diversity
Asian & Asian American Studies Institute
Office of Global Affairs
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
English Department
For more information, contact: Sean Forbes at sean.forbes@uconn.edu