Internationally acclaimed writers André Aciman and Francine du Plessix Gray will read from their work at New York University, Greenberg Lounge, NYU’s Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South on Thursday, April 23, 7 p.m. The reading, introduced by E.L. Doctorow, is free and open to the public; for further information the public may call (212) 998-8816. The event is hosted by the NYU Creative Writing Program.
André Aciman, the recipient of a 1995 Whiting Writer’s Award, was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and raised in Egypt, Italy and France. Educated at Harvard, he currently teaches at Bard College; he is also a visiting professor at NYU. Aciman is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Out of Egypt, which chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family from its arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, Aciman introduces the reader to the eccentrics who shaped his life.
Francine du Plessix Gray, born in 1930 in the French Embassy in Warsaw, where her father was a member of the diplomatic corps, emigrated to the U.S. with her Russian-born mother after her father’s death with the Free French Forces during World War II. She is the author of numerous books, including the novels Lovers and Tyrants and October Blood; a study of the attitudes of women in the Soviet Union in the Gorbachev era, Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope, and, most recently, At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life, a biography focusing on Sade’s intense relationships with his wife, his mother-in-law, and his three children (forthcoming in November, 1998). She has been decorated by the French government as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
This is the final event in the NYU Creative Writing Program Spring Reading Series. The series is made possible by generous support from the Lila Wallace Theater Fund at Community Funds, Inc., the corporate affiliate of The New York Community Trust.