BOOKS, POETRY & LECTURES

Home > BOOKS, POETRY & LECTURES > Inprint Brown Reading Series: Chitra Divakaruni & Gish Jen

• Tweet
• Outlook
• ICAL
• PRINT
• Email
• Feedback

• RSS

• Official Website
• Buy Tickets
• Add to My Favorites

Inprint Brown Reading Series: Chitra Divakaruni & Gish Jen

Presented by Inprint at Hobby Center - Zilkha Hall

March 7, 2011

Add Review/Comment
Comment on Facebook

Welcome to the 30th anniversary season of the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, considered one of the nation’s leading literary programs. Over the years, the Series has presented more than 300 of the world's great writers, including winners of five Nobel Prizes, 49 Pulitzer Prizes, 45 National Book Awards, and seven Booker Prize winners, as well as 13 U. S. Poet Laureates.

The 2010/2011 lineup continues the trend of literary greatness, presenting nine of the best contemporary writers. The season runs from September to April and consists of seven evenings, each beginning with a reading by one or two of the featured writers, followed by an on-stage interview conducted by a local writer or scholar. The evenings conclude with a book sale and signing, where audience members can meet the authors. All readings take place in Downtown Houston’s Theater District and begin at 7:30 pm.

Monday, March 7, 2011, in Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Inprint Brown Reading Series presents Chitra Divakaruni & Gish Jen.

CHITRA DIVAKARUNI, born in India, is the award-winning author of 16 books, including novels, short stories, poetry collections, and children’s books. She has been published in more than 50 magazines, included in more than 50 anthologies, and translated into 18 languages. Her novel, Sister of My Heart, was a national bestseller and her story collection Arranged Marriage received an American Book Award. Two of her novels, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, were made into films.

About her latest novel, One Amazing Thing, which focuses on a diverse cast of characters trapped together during a crisis, The Huffington Post writes, "Divakaruni is a beautiful writer, using words as lithely and effortlessly as breathing, and while she breathes, she sings.” Divakaruni is a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

GISH JEN’s (pictured above) work is known for its “trademark compassion, laser-like attention to detail, and quirky wit,” (Publishers Weekly). She is the author of three novels and a book of short stories, including a New York Times Notable Book, Typical American, shortlisted for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and Mona in the Promised Land.

About her story collection, Who’s Irish?, The New York Times Book Review says, "Jen's gift is for comedy that resonates, and sadnesses that arise with perfect timing from absurdities.Her subject matter is so appealing, it almost obscures the power and suppleness of her language.”

Her fourth novel, World and Town (which will be released October 2010), is a humorous and moving story about starting over and raises questions about religion, home, and what kind of world we want to make.