Event

 
Ayad Akhtar                                                                            Fariha Khan

Join Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar for lunchtime discussion. You might have been lucky enough to see a Philadelphia or New York production of Ayad’s Pulitzer-winning play, Disgraced. Ayad will be joined in conversation by Fariha Khan.

Just RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu or call us at 215-746-POEM, and we’ll see you at the lunch!

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Ayad Akhtar was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of American Dervish, published in over twenty languages worldwide and a 2012 Best Book of the Year at Kirkus Reviews, Toronto's Globe and Mail, Shelf-Awareness, and O (Oprah) Magazine. He is also a playwright and screenwriter. His stage play Disgraced played at New York's LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater in 2012, and won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His latest play, The Who & The What, premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2014. As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. He has been the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo, as well as commissions from Lincoln Center Theater and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He is a graduate of Brown and Columbia Universities with degrees in Theater and Film Directing.

Fariha Khan is the Associate Director of the Asian American Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania where she also teaches courses on South Asians in the U.S, Asian American Communities, as well as Muslim Identity in America. Her current research focuses on South Asian American Muslims and the Bangladeshi American community.

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Sponsored by: Penn Asian American Studies Program, Cinema Studies, English, Platt Performing Arts House, Writers Without Borders.