Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/30/2015
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Location
PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 296-8
18225 SW Broadway --Portland
PSU’s Institute for Asian Studies’ ‘Spotlight on South Asia’ Series presents
“Nepali Literature and New Nepali Identities”
By Ms. Manjushree Thapa
Thursday, April 30, 2015
6:30PM
Location: PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 296-8
18225 SW Broadway, Portland
Free & Open to the Public
Description:
How has Nepali identity, both past and present, been reformulated through literature? Manjushree Thapa will read from the works of writers who write in Nepali and other national languages, while also discussing her own goals as a writer of fiction and nonfiction. There has been a long tradition of political engagement in Nepal’s literature, one that lives and breathes today, and Manjushree Thapa will share her insights on the impact of this literature on the way that she and others think about themselves and Nepal.
About the speaker:
Manjushree Thapa is one of Asia’s foremost writers today. Thapa grew up in Nepal, Canada and the USA. She began to write upon completing her BFA in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her first book was Mustang Bhot in Fragments (1992). In 2001, she published the novel The Tutor of History, which she had begun as her MFA thesis in the creative writing program at the University of Washington. Her best known book is Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy (2005), published just weeks before the royal coup in Nepal on February 1, 2005. The book was shortlisted for the Lettre Ulysses Award in 2006.
After the publication of the book, Thapa left the country to write against the coup. In 2007 she published a short story collection, Tilled Earth. In 2009 she published a biography of a Nepali environmentalist: A Boy from Siklis: The Life and Times of Chandra Gurung. The following year she published a novel, Seasons of Flight. In 2011 she published a nonfiction collection, The Lives We Have Lost: Essays and Opinions on Nepal. She has also written as an op-ed contributor to The New York Times.
Her next fiction novel is set in the aid world in Nepal.
For more info, contact:
The PSU Institute for Asian Studies
[email protected]
503-725-8576