Please note that due to flood damage from Hurricane Harvey, this reading has been moved from downtown to the University of Houston’s Cullen Performance Hall. For a map and parking instructions at Cullen Performance Hall click here.

Reading followed by on-stage interview conducted by Alexander Parsons, director of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. There will NOT be a book signing after Ms. Lahiri’s reading but pre-signed books by the author will be available for sale. 

CRAFT TALK: On the afternoon of Monday, January 29, 4:30 pm, Ms. Lahiri will give a free moderated craft talk on the UH Central Campus. Click here for details.

JHUMPA LAHIRI has captivated readers ever since her debut story collection Interpreter of Maladies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and The New Yorker Debut of the Year. The San Francisco Chronicle calls Lahiri “one of our most beautiful chroniclers of the aching disjunctions of emigration and family,” and Vanity Fair writes, “Lahiri is an elegant stylist, effortlessly placing the perfect words in the perfect order time and again so we’re transported seamlessly into another place.” Her second novel The Lowland was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award. Lahiri’s story collection Unaccustomed Earth received the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Story Prize. Her first novel The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book and was made into a feature film starring Kal Pen. In Other Words (written in Italian and translated into English), her first nonfiction book, published in 2016, is described by The New York Times Book Review as “gorgeous… the most unusual of self-portraits. It is fitting that Italy, a nation with no unifying language for centuries, should inspire a writer of Jhumpa Lahiri’s stature to organize her reflections around the concept of exile.” Among her many honors, she has received the National Humanities Medal, the Asian American Literary Award, and the 2017 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

To order books by Jhumpa Lahiri at a discount click here.
To submit questions for Jhumpa Lahiri click here.
To learn more about the 2017/2018 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Series click here.

LINKS:

“Author Jhumpa Lahiri learns to juggle English, Italian and Trump,” by Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle, January 24, 2018. 

“Teach Yourself Italian,” by Jhumpa Lahiri, in The New Yorker, December 7, 2015. 

Author Interviews—“Political Violence, Uneasy Silence Echo in Lahiri’s Lowland,” NPR Morning Edition, September 23, 2013.

“The author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake talks about her affinity for ‘plainness,’ why she avoids books reviews, and her new collection of short stories, by Isaac Chotiner, The Atlantic, April 2008.