The Political Life of the Novel

Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance–an initiative at the intersection of the arts and human rights–is hosting an upcoming panel of critically acclaimed authors Amir Ahmadi Arian, Isabella Hammad, and Brandon Hobson in conversation with Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Director, Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance at the University of Notre Dame. The readings and discourse will explore the facets of “The Political Life of the Novel.” Join us on Thursday, November 7, 2024, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. ET.

Speakers:
Dr. Brandon Hobson is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow. He received his Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. His novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking, was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Reading the West Award, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, among other distinctions. His short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, NOON, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University and at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is the editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma.

Isabella Hammad is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Parisian (Grove Press, 2019), which won the 2019 Palestine Book Award. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and the debut was praised by the New York Times Book Review as a “dazzling…deeply-imagined historical novel.” A love story set amidst the political tumult of Palestine in the early 20th century, The Parisian was awarded the the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK, and the Plimpton Prize. The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return home to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence. “Written in soulful, searching prose,” The Guardian continues: “it’s a jam-packed epic that sets the life of one man against the backdrop of the fall of the Ottoman empire, the British mandate over Palestine and the Arab uprising for independence. Hammad wades through more than 20 years of political upheaval to explore ideas about cultural identity, parental betrayal and the accidental harm we often cause others.”

Amir Ahmadi Arian was born in Ahvaz, Iran. he spent his childhood in the war zone of the Iran-Iraq war where his mother was a nurse in frontline hospitals. Amir started his writing career in Iran in 2000. He has published two novels, a collection of stories, and a book of nonfiction in Persian. He also translated from English to Persian novels by E.L Doctorow, Paul Auster, P.D. James, and Cormac McCarthy. Amir left Iran in 2011 to undertake a Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Queensland, Australia. Since 2014 he has been writing exclusively in English. In this phase of his career, he has published short stories and essays in The New York Times, Harper’s, New York Review of Books, Paris Review, LRB, Lithub, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, etc. Amir earned an MFA in the NYU Creative Writing Program as The Axinn Foundation/E.L. Doctorow Fellowship recipient of 2016 – 2018. His first novel in English, Then The Fish Swallowed Him, was published by HarperVia/HarperCollins in March 2020. He is an Assistant professor of Creative Writing at Binghamton University and lives in Ithaca, New York.

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For more information visit the event website.