Scholarly Colloquia and Events

  • 4/19 Writing from a Mediterranean in Crisis

    The University of Connecticut’s Creative Writing Program and Literatures, Cultures & Languages Department are pleased to announce that poet Jazra Khaleed and novelist Amara Lakhous will be reading at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, 2016, at the UConn Co-op, Storrs Center. The reading will be followed by a discussion moderated by translator Peter Constantine.

    Jazra Khaleed was born in Grozny, Chechnya. Today he lives in Athens, writes and publishes exclusively in Greek, and is known as a poet, editor, and translator. Khaleed’s poetry has been widely translated in Europe, the US, and Japan. As a founding co-editor of TEFLON magazine, and particularly through his own translations published there, he has introduced the works of Amiri Baraka, Keston Sutherland, Lionel Fogarty, and many other political and experimental poets to a Greek readership. Amara Lakhous fled his native Algeria in 1995 during the civil war, and has lived in Italy first as a political refugee, then as an immigrant and, as of 2008, a citizen. He is the author of five novels, three of which he wrote in both Arabic and Italian. His best known works are the much acclaimed Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008), Divorce Islamic Style (2012), and A Dispute over a Very Italian Piglet (2014).

    The event, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the English Department, the Literatures, Cultures & Languages Department, the UConn’s Creative Writing Program, and the UConn Co-op.

    For more information, contact: Ellen Litman at ellen.litman@uconn.edu