A reading and brief question and answer with award winning local authors Gina Apostol, Uzma Aslam Khan, and Ellen Meeropol. Books will be available for purchase at the event and more information available on the Forbes Library Event Calendar!
Gina Apostol's fourth novel, Insurrecto, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and named by Publishers' Weekly one of the Ten Best Books of 2018. Her third book, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize.
Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City. Uzma Aslam Khan is an award-winning author of five novels that include Trespassing, nominated for a 2003 Commonwealth Prize; The Geometry of God, a Kirkus Review's Best Book of 2009; Thinner Than Skin, longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and winner of the French Embassy Prize for Best Fiction at the Karachi Literature Festival 2014; and, most recently, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, released in India in 2019 and shortlisted for the Tata Literature Live! Best Book of the Year Award for Fiction 2019. Her short story "My Mother is a Lunar Crater" won second prize in Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction Competition 2018, judged by National Book Award-winner Colum McCann, while her story "Plum Island" won first prize in Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction competition 2019, judged by Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Orange. Khan is the first repeat prizewinner in the magazine's history. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Massachusetts Review, the Guardian, and Nimrod International Journal, among other national and international periodicals and journals, and is forthcoming in Calyx and Red Hen Press.
Born in Pakistan, Khan has lived in England, Japan, Upstate New York, Arizona, Morocco and Hawaii. She teaches at Hampshire College. Ellen Meeropol is the author of four novels, Her Sister's Tattoo (coming April 2020), Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest. Her work has been honored by the Women's National Book Association, the Massachusetts Center for the Book, PBS NewsHour, the American Book Fest, and Publishers Weekly. Recent essay publications include Lilith, Ms Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Writer, Guernica, and The Writers Chronicle. She is a founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild and leads the Guild's Social Justice Writing project. This reading will begin promptly at 7pm and is wheelchair accessible. Assistive listening support available as well.
