Ani Gjika is an Albanian-born poet, literary translator, teacher, and author of Bread on Running Waters (Fenway Press, 2013). Gjika moved to the U.S. at age 18 and earned an MA in English at Simmons College and an MFA in poetry at Boston University. Her translation from the Albanian of Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku is due in 2018 from Bloodaxe in the UK and New Directions in the US. Her honors include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, the Banff Centre International Literary Translators Residency, Framingham State University’s Miriam Levine Reader Award, and the Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. Gjika’s own poetry appears in Seneca Review, Salamander, Plume, From the Fishouse and elsewhere. Her translations from the Albanian appear in World Literature Today, Ploughshares, AGNI Online, Catamaran Literary Reader, Two Lines Online, From the Fishouse and elsewhere.

Gazmend Kapllani is an Albanian-born journalist, poet, and writer. His works of fiction explore how totalitarianism, immigration, borders, and Balkan history have shaped private lives and personal narratives. He lived in Athens for over twenty years. He received his PhD in political science and history from Panteion University in Athens, with a dissertation on the image of Albanians in the Greek press and of Greeks in the Albanian press. In addition, he was a columnist for Greece’s leading daily newspapers. Kapllani’s first novel A Short Border Handbook (Livanis, 2006) has become a best-seller and has been translated into Danish, English, French, Polish, Albanian and Italian. Since 2012 he has been living in the US and has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships and residencies. In 2012, he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, in 2013 an International Writers Project Fellow at the Literary Arts Program at Brown University, and in 2015 writer-in-residence at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College. Kapllani currently lives in Boston and teaches Creative Writing and European History at Emerson College. Co-sponsored by the BU Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking. A book-signing will follow the event.

SPEAKERS:

Ani Gjika, Gazmend Kapllani

AUDIENCE:

public

ADDRESS:

Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering (CILSE), 610 Commonwealth Avenue

FEES:

free