This online event, part of Carnegie Hall’s citywide spring Afrofuturism Festival, features an evening of readings and discussion between award-winning authors Samuel R. Delany and Namwali Serpell moderated by Smaran Dayal.
In 2016, Samuel R. Delany was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. He is the author of the award-winning novels Babel-17 and Dark Reflections, as well as Nova, Dhalgren, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series. A retired professor, he lives in Philadelphia with his partner Dennis, and his website is www.samueldelany.com.
Zambian-American writer Namwali Serpell’s novel The Old Drift (2019) received numerous awards including the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize for fiction “that confronts racism and explores diversity,” the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Grand Prix des Associations Littéraires Prize for Belles-Lettres, and the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. She was co-recipient of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction (with Yiyun Li). She is a Professor of English at Harvard University. Her website is www.namwaliserpell.com.
Smaran Dayal is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University, where he is writing a dissertation on literary Afrofuturism, and a Public Humanities Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York. He recently co-edited an anthology of American literature, Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts (2020).
