TICKETS: $30 general admission tickets, which include a signed hardcover copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection Roman Stories. Your copy will be available for pickup at the Inprint house (1520 West Main Street, Houston, TX 77006). Special accommodation can be made for snail mail delivery. Please email us at info@inprint.org to arrange.
DETAILS AND HOW TO WATCH: This is an online rebroadcast of Jhumpa Lahiri’s live event as part of the 2023/2024 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. This online event will be accessible from the Inprint website. Details on how to access the reading will be provided to season subscribers. Those who purchase general admission tickets for this rebroadcast event will be provided the viewing link on their Eventbrite email receipt in the “Additional Information” section.
JHUMPA LAHIRI is “a genius of the miniature stroke and the great arc” (The Chicago Tribune). Her debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize and her second novel The Lowland was a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. She is also the recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and the National Humanities Medal for “illuminating the Indian American experience in beautifully wrought narratives of estrangement and belonging” (White House Citation). Her other works in English include The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, Whereabouts, In Other Words, The Clothing of Books, and Translating Myself and Others.
Lahiri comes to Houston to read from and talk about her new short story collection Roman Stories, which she wrote in Italian and features the city of Rome as the protagonist. The collection explores the tensions of a changing city, the challenge of straddling cultures, and the meaning of home. According to Lahiri’s publisher Picador, “These intimate and poignant stories are rich with her signature gifts: lyrical prose, emotional wisdom, visceral imagery and overwhelming universality.” Lahiri is the director of creative writing at Barnard College and splits her time between New York and Rome.
Andrea Bajani is one of the most acclaimed and award-winning novelists of contemporary Italian and European literature. He is the author of nine books, including If You Kept a Record of Sins, Every Promise, and The Book of Homes. He is the editor of The Stories We Tell, a collection of essays about writing, which includes texts by Margaret Atwood, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, and Michael Ondaatje. Bajani teaches at Rice University in the Department of English and the Department of Modern and Classical Literatures and Cultures.