A Words Without Borders celebration of multicultural, multilingual authors reading their works.
Join a diverse lineup of award-winning writers as they come together to celebrate and share their writing. The evening is inspired by the column “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders magazine, the most important international literature magazine in the United States, celebrating its 20th anniversary. The column takes readers on journeys—ruminations on urban life and the imagination, literature and language, translation, and transitions.
This global gathering is curated by NYU Abu Dhabi’s Nathalie Handal (USA-France-Palestine) Award-winning poet and curator of “The City and the Writer,” starring Alain Mabanckou (Congo-France-USA) Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire, Naomi Shihab Nye (Palestinian-American) Young People’s Poet Laureate, Giancarlo de Cataldo (Italy) Award-winning screenwriter, Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone-Scotland) Windham Campbell Prize winner, David Henry Hwang (American) Tony Award winner, Geetanjali Shree (India) Booker Prize winner, Isabella Hammad (Britain-Palestine) Granta Best of Young British Novelists, Fernanda Trías (Uruguay) Award-winning novelist, Maryam Madjidi (France) Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, Shahad Al-Rawi (Iraq) Edinburgh Prize for First Fiction, with Sam Nester (Australia-USA) on the trumpet.
Biographies
Nathalie Handal is described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” She is the author of 10 award-winning books, including Life in a Country Album, winner of the Palestine Book Award; the flash collection The Republics, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers,” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award; and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, and The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and the Africa Institute, among others. She is a professor at New York University-AD.
Alain Mabanckou is an award-winning novelist, poet, essayist, and professor at UCLA. He is the author of African Psycho, Broken Glass, Black Bazaar, and Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty, as well as The Lights of Pointe-Noire and Black Moses. Among his many honors are the Académie Française’s Grand Prix de Literature, awarded in recognition of his entire literary career, the 2016 French Voices Award for The Lights of Pointe-Noire, which was described by Salman Rushdie as “a beautiful book,” the Prix Renaudot 2006 for Mémoires de porc-épi and a finalist for the 2015 and 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Mabanckou is a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, and has been featured on Vanity Fair’s list of France’s 50 most influential people.
Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. Nye is a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, and “The Betty Prize” from Poets House for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature. She is Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 the Texas Institute of Letters awarded her the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement, in 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle, and in 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Giancarlo de Cataldo is a writer, playwright, screenwriter, and director. He is the author of numerous books including Nero come il cuore (1989), The Father and the Foreigner (1997), and the bestselling Romanzo Criminale (Einaudi 2002), which was made into a television series directed by Stefano Sollima, and a film directed by Michele Placido. His most recent novels include La Notte di Roma (2015), Suburra, which was made into a Netflix series, and Colpo di ritorno (Einaudi, 2023). Among his many honors, he is the recipient of the David di Donatello for Best Screenplay, the Prix du Polar Europeen, and the Abbiati Prize for the libretto“Acquaprofonda,” music by Giovanni Sollima. He lives in Rome.
Aminatta Forna is the award-winning author of the four novels Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and the critically acclaimed memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water. Her most recent, The Window Seat, is a stunning new collection of essays crossings both literal and philosophical, our relationship with the natural world, and the stories that we tell ourselves. Her fiction has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award and the PEN Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, as has been short-listed for the Neustadt Prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the IMPAC Award, the Warwick Prize and nominated for the European Prize for Fiction. Her memoir was serialized on BBC Radio and in The Sunday Times newspaper. Forna is currently a Lannan Visiting Chair at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
David Henry Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner who has been twice nominated, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Among his most known plays are Yellow Face, Golden Child, Chinglish, and M. Butterfly. He is currently penning the live-action feature musical remake of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Anna May Wong biopic to star actress Gemma Chan. In television, he was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair and is the showrunner of Billion Dollar Whale for Westward/SKG, 2023. He also co-wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late music icon Prince. Recent honors include his 2022 induction into the Lucille Lortel Playwrights Sidewalk and his 2021 election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Geetanjali Shree is known for her innovative use of language and structure. She is the winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize and of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for her novel, Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi in the Hindi original). Her four other novels include Mai (Mai: Silently Mother), Hamara Shahar Us Baras, Tirohit (The Roof Beneath Their Feet), and Khali Jagah (Empty Space), and five collections of short stories. Besides English, her work has been translated into many languages. Shree has also worked on theatre scripts in collaboration with a Delhi-based group, Vivadi, of which she is one of the founding members.
Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. She has been awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, an O. Henry Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award, and a Betty Trask Award, and she was a National Book Foundation "5 under 35". Her work has been supported with fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and she has taught literature and creative writing at NYU, Brown, and Al Quds Bard College. In 2023 she was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, which names the most significant British writers under 40.
Fernanda Trías was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and is currently based in Colombia. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and has published the novels Cuaderno para un solo ojo, La azotea (in English as The Rooftop, Charco Press), and La ciudad invencible, as well as the short story collection No soñarás flores. Her most recent novel, Mugre rosa (Literatura Random House 2020), was supported by a residency at the SEGIB-Eñe-Casa de Velázquez, was chosen by the New York Times in Spanish as one of the ten best books of the year, received Uruguay's National Literature and Bartolomé Hidalgo prizes and Mexico's international Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prize, and will be published in English as Pink Slime by Scribe (UK/AU) and Scribner (US). Her work has been translated into numerous languages.
Maryam Madjidi finished a Master's in comparative literature and a Master's in French as a foreign language didactics at the Sorbonne and then taught French to middle school and high school students. She lived four years in Beijing and two years in Istanbul and currently resides in the suburbs of Paris where she teaches French to unaccompanied minors. She is a columnist for l’Humanité magazine. Madjidi has published two novels, Marx et la poupée, winner of the Prix Goncourt du premier roman 2017 and Pour que je m'aime encore (2021); and two children’s books, Je m'appelle Maryam (2019) et Mon amie Zahra (2021).
Shahad Al-Rawi is an Iraqi novelist and anthropologist. Born in Baghdad, she went to Damascus after the American invasion of Iraq to complete her university studies. Her first novel The Baghdad Clock (2016), was translated into several languages, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award. Her second novel Banner Over the Republic Bridge (2021), was nominated for the Sheikh Zayed Award. Al-Rawi writes for various Arab and foreign newspapers.
Sam Nester is an Australian-born, New York City-based trumpet player and composer. He has been the artist-in-residence for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Bruny Island, and the Festival Arts Design Acerenza. Nester has received commissions for the creation of site-specific sound installations and musical compositions by EcoArt Project, and the Fulbright Commission at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, among others. He has been working with Joint Research Center scientists and European Commission policy officers on the design of two environmental sound installations due to open in Brussels, in December 2023. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Australian Music Foundation Award, and the Brian Boak Outstanding Performer Award. He is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, NYUAD 2023-2024.
ScheduleThe doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7:00 p.m. ensuring you have ample time to settle in.
Venue policies, restrictions, and terms- Entry to the NYUAD Campus is through either the East or West Parking or the Welcome Center.
- Patrons will be required to present a valid ticket to an event at The Arts Center upon entry to the campus.
For access and wheelchair bookings please email nyuad.boxoffice@nyu.edu
How to get there:By car: Drive east on Sheikh Zayed Road, take the Saadiyat Island exit, and follow signs to Saadiyat Island and the NYU Abu Dhabi campus.
By taxi: You can also take a taxi to The Arts Center NYU Abu Dhabi from anywhere in town. It's a famous destination and most drivers will be familiar with the location.
