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Being part of a panel discussion with celebrated writers of world literature is both embarrassing and exciting. I was on a panel with Cristina Rivera Garza and Eduardo Halfon at the Brooklyn Lit Fest, held in Brooklyn, New York, on September 27, 2026. I felt embarrassed because the occasion was somewhat disturbing to my creative ego. I consider myself one of the major writers working in world literature today, yet I am relatively unknown to Western audiences. The other writers have the advantage of belonging to cultures that are much closer to America and Europe. As a writer from a South Indian language, my subjects, their cultural background, and even the images I use are often unfamiliar to them. So I have to make a greater effort to reach them, while they have to move beyond their preconceptions and approach my work with greater attention.

Presenting CJ Davis, a Mexican American acrylic portrait artist, public health scholar, and community advocate whose work centers on memory, identity, and care.

The tenth anniversary of the Cheuse Center is ongoing and we are excited to bring you our Fall programs. The anniversary year coincides with the 250th Anniversary of America’s independence. To mark this landmark year, the Cheuse Center has developed a program on seeing America from the outside in and the inside out.

George Mason Creative Writing Program presents its fall 2026 Visiting Writers Series, bringing some of the best working artists in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to campus for readings, conversations, and book signings.

George Mason student Noella Mongony has received second prize in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics essay contest, the Elie Wiesel Foundation has announced.

As part of its evolving research residency program, the Provisions Research Center for Art and Social Change—the research arm of Mason Exhibitions—continues to develop experimental initiatives grounded in open, interdisciplinary dialogue. Conceived as spaces for collective inquiry, these conversations serve as catalysts for academic research, exhibitions, and other creative practices.

In celebration of ten years since the establishment of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at Geoge Mason University, the center brought together international artists in a week-long festival titled “Imagining Sanctuary” to discuss craft and to reflect on the artist’s role during history’s challenging moments.

In May 2026, Cheuse Center board member Katherine E. Young’s translation of Akram Aylisli’s People and Trees (Plamen Press) was named one of three finalists for the 2026 European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Literature Prize. The winning author and translator will be announced on 2 July at an awards ceremony at the EBRD’s headquarters in London. 

For the past few months, I have been carrying with me a book of haikus, or near haikus, by the Japanese poet Sayumi Kamakura, translated into English by James Shea. Applause for a Cloud, published last year by Black Ocean press in Boston, begins with these lines: 

In Greece’s Chinatowns, I saw Chinese immigrants traversing the streets but not in a flashy red-lantern-golden-gate-fortune-cookie-boba-drinks type of way but in a more waking-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn-and-opening-up-shop-and-smoking-a-cigarrette type of way. The Chinese immigrants in Greece were more lowkey. I was thinking this when I walked through the streets in the summer of 2026.