Events

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Spring 2021 readings

Poems of Healing: A Reading
Celebrating the publication of the new Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets volume, edited by Karl Kirchwey
Thursday, April 8, 2021 at 7 pm, here on Zoom
Featuring Rafael Campo, Kate Daniels, Herbert Golder, Dorothy Kelly, Karl Kirchwey, Robert Pinsky, Mary Jo Salter, Nicole Sealey, Sassan Tabatabai, James Uden, Alissa Valles, J. Keith Vincent, Rosanna Warren

The Annual Faculty Reading
Featuring Leslie Epstein, Ha Jin, Karl Kirchwey, Gail Mazur, Sigrid Nunez, Robert Pinsky, & Nicole Sealey
Tuesday, April 21, 2021 at 6 pm

Spring 2020 reading

The Annual Faculty Reading, virtual version!
Featuring Leslie Epstein, Ha Jin, Karl Kirchwey, Gail Mazur, Sigrid Nunez, Robert Pinsky, & Nicole Sealey
Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 7 pm

Fall 2019 reading

Viet Thanh Nguyen at the Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer Series
Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 7 pm
Kenmore Classroom Building, room 101
565 Commonwealth Ave, Boston

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. His current book is the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer. He is a critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times and a contributing opinion writer for the New York. His most recent publication is Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his six-year-old son, Ellison.

Past Events

The Tenth Annual Global Fellows Reading
Featuring our 2018 Global Fellows
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
reception at 6:30 pm and reading at 7 pm
BU Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, 2nd Floor

The Annual Faculty Reading
Featuring Leslie Epstein, Ha Jin, Karl Kirchwey, Sigrid Nunez, Robert Pinsky, Nicole Sealey, & Neshat Khan (Fiction ’18)
Monday, April 8 at 7 pm
BU Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, 2nd Floor

 

George Saunders at the Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer Series
Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 7 pm
Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston

The recipient of a 2006 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (“Genius” Award), George Saunders is the author of a novel, four collections of short stories, a novella, a book of essays, and an award-winning children’s book. In 2017, Saunders won the Man Booker Prize for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo. His collection, Tenth of December, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of the 2014 Story Prize for short fiction and the 2014 Folio Prize. Tenth of December was also named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Saunders’s other collections include the bestselling Pastoralia, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and Persuasion Nation. Saunders is also the author of the novella-length illustrated fable, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, and the New York Times bestselling children’s book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip.

The Ninth Annual Global Fellows Reading
Featuring our 2017 Global Fellows
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
reception at 6:30 pm and reading at 7 pm
BU Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, 4th Floor

The Annual Faculty Reading
Featuring Leslie Epstein, Ha Jin, Karl Kirchwey, Gail Mazur, Sigrid Nunez, Robert Pinsky, & Arlyce Menzies (Poetry ’17)
Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 7 pm
BU Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, 2nd Floor

 

The Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer Series presents GISH JEN
Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 7 PM
The Trustee Ballroom at 1 Silber Way, 9th Floor

Gish Jen is the award-winning author of seven books, including most recently The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories four times.  Among others, her novels include Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land, and her book of short stories is Who’s Irish?.  Nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award, her work was featured in a PBS American Master’s special on the American novel, and is widely taught.

The Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer Series presents JENNIFER HAIGH
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 7:30 PM
The BU Castle, 225 Bay State Road

Jennifer Haigh’s latest novel, Heat and Light, was published in spring 2016 to critical acclaim. She is the author of four previous novels: Faith, The Condition, Baker Towers, and Mrs. Kimble, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her short story collection News From Heaven won the Massachusetts Book Award and the PEN New England Award in Fiction. Haigh’s short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories and many other places. She lives in Boston.

The Annual Faculty Reading

Tuesday, April 5, 2016 7:00 PM
Boston University Hillel House, 4th floor
213 Bay State Road

Featuring
Maggie Dietz
Leslie Epstein
Jennifer Haigh
Ha Jin
Karl Kirchwey
Sigrid Nunez
Robert Pinsky
Mike Brokos (poetry alum 2012)

The Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer Series presents JUNOT DIAZ

Monday, October 26, 2015 at 7 PM
Law School Auditorium, 767 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Junot Díaz is the author of Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist.  He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers University, Díaz is the fiction editor at Boston Review and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Annual Faculty Reading

Wednesday, April 8, 2015 7:00 PM
Boston University Hillel House, 4th floor
213 Bay State Road

Featuring
Dan Chiasson
Leslie Epstein
Ha Jin
Karl Kirchwey
Sigrid Nunez
Robert Pinsky
Mai Wang (fiction alum 2014)

Free and open to the public

The Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer Series presents RACHEL KUSHNER

Tuesday, April 14, 2015 at 6 PM
Photonics Auditorium, 8 St. Mary’s Street in Boston

Rachel Kushner is the author of The Flamethrowers, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, the 2014 Folio Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize, long-listed for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and a New York Times Top Five Novel of 2013. Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the California Book Award, and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book. Kushner is the only writer ever to be nominated for a National Book Award in Fiction for both a first and second novel. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, and the Paris Review, among other places. She is the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Annual Faculty Reading

Wednesday, March 26, 2014, at 7 PM
Boston University Photonics Center Auditorium
8 St. Mary’s St.

Featuring
Dan Chiasson
Leslie Epstein
Ha Jin
Sigrid Nunez
Robert Pinsky
Caitlin Doyle (Poetry Alum 2008)
Nell Stevens (Fiction Alum 2013)

Free and open to the public

This event is free and open to the public. We suggest arriving early to guarantee a seat. Public parking is available in the BU Granby Street lot at 665 Commonwealth Avenue, with limited metered spots on Bay State Road and Commonwealth Avenue. Via MBTA, take the Green Line to  BU East. You can find more information at http://www.bu.edu/maps/ or http://www.bu.edu/parking.

 

The Ha Jin Visiting Lecture Series presents JHUMPA LAHIRI in conversation with DAPHNE KALOTAY

Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 7:00 pm
Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, a graduate of our program in fiction, will read from her novel The Lowland, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award. After the reading, Lahiri will be joined onstage for a conversation with fellow alumna Daphne Kalotay (Fiction 1994), the award-winning author of Russian Winter and Sight Reading.

This event is free and open to the public. We suggest arriving early to guarantee a seat. Public parking is available in the BU Granby Street lot at 665 Commonwealth Avenue, with limited metered spots on Bay State Road and Commonwealth Avenue. Via MBTA, take the Green Line to the Kenmore or Blandford Street station. You can find more information at http://www.bu.edu/maps/ or http://www.bu.edu/parking

JHUMPA LAHIRI was born in London and raised in Rhode Island. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and author of two previous books. Her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award and The New Yorker Debut of the Year. Her novel The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. She is a graduate of the Boston University Creative Writing program and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A citizen of both Canada and the U.S., DAPHNE KALOTAY grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Vassar College before moving to Massachusetts to attend Boston University’s Creative Writing Program. There her stories went on to win the school’s Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize and a Transatlantic Review Award from The Henfield Foundation. She remained at BU to complete a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Literature and, with Saul Bellow as her advisor, wrote her doctoral dissertation on the works of Mavis Gallant. (Her interviews with Mavis Gallant can be read in The Paris Review‘s Writers-At-Work series.) A MacDowell Fellow, Daphne has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo.  Her fiction collection, Calamity and Other Stories (Doubleday), was short listed for the 2005 Story Prize, and her debut novel, Russian Winter (HarperCollins), won the 2011 Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Prize, made the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and has been published in 21 foreign editions.  Her newest novel is Sight Reading (Harper, 2013).  Currently co-president of the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, Daphne lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

The Ha Jin Visiting Lecture program, made possible by a generous donation from Mr. Robert Hildreth of Boston, is designed to bring internationally renowned fiction writers to Boston University to teach master classes and give public lectures. Jhumpa Lahiri is the third Visiting Lecturer; past honorees have included Victor Golyshev and Paul Harding. The series is named for HA JIN, a Boston University Creative Writing alumnus and current professor. Born in China in 1956, Jin was a teenager when China entered the Cultural Revolution. He became a member of the People’s Liberation Army at the age of fourteen. Writing in English, Jin has won the National Book Award, the PEN/ Faulkner twice, the PEN/Hemingway award, and the Flannery O’Connor prize.

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