How does a writer represent the self across memoir, journalism, and fiction? How does contemporary fiction wrestle with questions of transnational identity, migration, and exile? Three Hudson Valley writers will debate all this and more in the Louw-Bogardus Ruin. Join us!
Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction and four novels. The books of nonfiction include Husband of a Fanatic, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, and A Matter of Rats. His novel Immigrant, Montana was on the best of the year lists at The New Yorker, The New York Times, and President Obama’s list of favorite books of 2018. His next novel A Time Outside This Time was described by the New Yorker as “a shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.” Kumar’s latest novel, My Beloved Life, was praised by James Wood as “beautiful, truthful fiction.”
Aatish Taseer is the author of the memoirs A Return to Self, long-listed for the NBCC Award for Nonfiction, and Stranger to History; the acclaimed novels The Way Things Were, The Temple-Goers, and Noon; and the memoir and travelogue The Twice-Born. He is a writer at large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
Ryan Chapman is a Sri Lankan-American writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who lives in Kingston, New York. His second novel The Audacity (Soho Press, 2024) was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and received praise from Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, and Literary Hub. His debut novel Riots I Have Known (Simon & Schuster, 2019) was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a best book of the year by Electric Literature and The Marshall Project. His criticism and humor pieces have appeared in Bookforum, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times, McSweeney's, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
Supported by Arts Mid-Hudson and the New York Council on the Arts, and presented with Rough Draft Bar & Books and Friends of Historic Kingston.
