September 18, 2008 | 8 p.m.
Murchison Lane Auditorium, Babcock Fine Arts Center

Azar Nafisi is the author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books," which has been translated into 32 languages and received many awards. In 2006, she won a Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature, presented by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media.

Nafisi is a visiting professor and the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., where she is a professor of aesthetics, culture and literature.

She also is the author of "Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov's Novels," and she wrote the new introduction to the Modern Library Classics edition of Tolstoy's "Hadji Murad," as well as the introduction to Iraj Pezeshkzad's "My Uncle Napoleon," published by Modern Library.

She has published a children's book, "BiBi and the Green Voice," with illustrator Sophie Benini Pietromarchi, and is currently working on two books. The first, "The Republic of the Imagination," is about the power of literature to liberate minds and peoples. The second, "Things I Have Been Silent About," is a memoir about her mother.

Nafisi lives in Washington, D.C.

Lecture | October 8, 2008 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Reading | October 9, 2008 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Yiyun Li is the author of the story collection "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," which received the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award and the California Book Award for first fiction.

She grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. She earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa.

Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Prospect and elsewhere.

She has received grants and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation, and was selected by Granta magazine as one of its Best Young American Novelists.

She lives in Oakland, Calif., with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at the University of California, Davis.

October 16, 2008 | 7:30 p.m.
Browsing Room, Cochran Library

Goytisolo will speak in Spanish on his literary career and creative process. Readings in Spanish and English by Goytisolo and Sweet Briar professor of Spanish Pam DeWeese from his novel, "360° Diary".

Lecture | November 12, 2008 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Reading | November 13, 2008 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Novelist and playwright Zakes Mda has won every major South African literary prize. His novels include "The Heart of Redness," "She Plays with the Darkness," "Ways of Dying," "The Madonna of Excelsior," "The Whale Caller" and "Cion."

Before the collapse of South Africa's segregationist regime in the early 1990s, several of Mda's plays, including "We Shall Sing for the Fatherland," "Dark Voices Ring" and "Dead End," were banned by government censors. He was arrested for his anti-apartheid political activities in the 1960s and went into exile in the 1970s.

Mda received a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award in 2003 and is currently a professor of creative writing at Ohio University.

Lecture | February 11, 2009 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Reading | February 12, 2009 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Zhang Er was born in Beijing, China, and moved to the U.S. in 1986. Her full-length collections of poetry include "Seen, Unseen" (QingHai Publishing House of China), "Water Words" (New World Poetry Press, Calif.), and most recently, "Because of Mountain" (TonSan, Taiwan).

Her poems also have appeared in English translation in many poetry journals. She has six chapbooks in translation: "Winter Garden" (Goats and Compasses), "Verses on Bird" (Jensen/Daniels), "The Autumn of Gu Yao" (Spuyten Duyvil), "Pick Lotus" (Belladonna Books), "Carved Water" (Tinfish Press) and "Sight Progress" (Pleasure Boat Studio).

"Verses on Bird," her selected poems in a Chinese and English bilingual edition, was published by Zephyr Press in the summer of 2004.

She has read and lectured at international festivals, conferences, reading series and universities in the U.S., China, France, Portugal, Russia, Peru, Argentina, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong.

She currently teaches at The Evergreen State College in Washington.

Lecture | April 15, 2009 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Reading | April 16, 2009 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Manil Suri is the author of the novels "The Death of Vishnu" and "The Age of Shiva." "The Death of Vishnu" received the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and was short-listed for the Penn Faulkner Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize. It has been translated into 22 languages. His short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review.

He was born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and came to the United States as a student when he was 20. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 2004.

In addition to being a writer, Suri also is a mathematician. He earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and is a tenured, full professor in the department of mathematics and statistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

He lives in Silver Spring, Md., and is a citizen of both the United States and India.

Lecture | April 20, 2009 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Reading | April 21, 2009 | 8 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Bernardo Atxaga (Joseba Irazu Garmendia) is a renowned contemporary Basque writer who publishes in his native language, Euskera. His short story "Ziutateaz" and book of poetry "Etiopia" both received National Critics prizes for best works in the Basque language. His novels include "The Lone Man," "The Lone Woman," "Two Brothers" and "The Son of the Accordionist."