Annapolis Book Festival: Writing in Exile
Saturday, April 24, 2021 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT
Expand your world by joining these writers who will talk to us about their unique journeys from Egypt and Venezuela and how their craft and stories are affected by living and writing in exile. Meet Israel Centeno, who is from Venezuela and is the author of The Conspiracy and Egyptian author Ahmed Naji, who fled from Egypt after being convicted and jailed for harming public morality with his writings.
Israel Centeno is a writer of short stories and novels, a professor of literary creativity, a translator, and a cultural promoter. His seventeen books of novels, short stories and tales have been published in Venezuela, Spain, England, and the United States. He received the National Culture Council (CONAC) Prize and the Caracas Municipal Prize in 1992 for his first novel Calletania. His book of short stories Bamboo City and his novel El Complot (The Conspiracy) have been translated into English and published in the United States. His most recent published book is Writing With an Accent. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, where he was City of Asylum writer-in-residence.
Ahmed Naji is a writer, journalist, art critic, and convicted criminal in Egypt. He is the author of Rogers, Using Life, and And Tigers to My Room. Mr. Naji has won several prizes including a Dubai Press Club Award, a PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, and an Open Eye Award. He is currently a City of Asylum Fellow at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute.
Event moderator Matthew Davis is the founding director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. He’s the author of When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale and his work has appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post Magazine and Guernica. Mr. Davis has been an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, and a Fulbright fellow to Syria and Jordan. He holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and an M.A.in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
