The Fall 2022 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series, beginning Sept. 8, will feature acclaimed writers from around the world. The series, hosted by Cornell’s Creative Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, brings innovative, award-winning authors to read from their work on Cornell’s Ithaca campus.
All readings are free and open to the public, and take place on Thursdays at 5 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, G70 Klarman Hall. Each event closes with a live Q&A and is followed by a book signing with books for purchase on-site from Buffalo Street Books.
On Sept. 8, novelist NoViolet Bulawayo MFA ’10 will read from her fiction. Her debut novel, “We Need New Names,” won the PEN/Hemingway Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize—marking the first time a Black woman from Africa received this recognition. Her latest novel, “Glory,” establishes Bulawayo as a new and essential voice in the fiction of the contemporary African diaspora. The most translated author in modern Zimbabwean history, Bulawayo grew up in Zimbabwe; while earning her MFA from Cornell, she was a recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. She has also held fellowships at Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford.
On September 29, poet Solmaz Sharif will read from her work. Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Sharif is the author of two poetry collections, “Look,” finalist for the National Book Award, and “Customs.” Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times, and has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lannan Foundation, and Stanford University.
On Oct. 20, the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading will feature Zalaznick Distinguished Visiting Writer Sandeep Parmar reading from her work, followed by a conversation with Valzhyna Mort, associate professor of literatures in English (A&S).
Poet and critic Parmar is the author of a number of books, including three of poetry, “The Marble Orchard,” “Eidolon,” and “Faust.” Her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the Times Literary Supplement.
She is a BBC New Generation Thinker and Co-Director of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing. In 2017, she co-founded the Ledbury Poetry Critics program for poetry critics of color. Parmar is a professor of English literature at Liverpool University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts.
Valzhyna Mort is the author of three poetry collections, “Factory of Tears,” “Collected Body,” and “Music for the Dead and Resurrected,” which was named one of the best poetry books of 2020 by The New York Times and which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the UNT Rilke Prize. Mort is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Foundation. Her work has been honored with the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Born in Minsk, Belarus, Mort translates between English, Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish.
Currently on the Cornell campus, masks are encouraged but not required. For the latest university public health guidelines visit covid.cornell.edu.
For more information, visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick, email creativewriting@cornell.edu or call 607-255-7847.
Amanda Brockner is MFA Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Literatures in English in the College of Arts and Sciences.
