CORVALLIS, Ore. – Novelist Namwali Serpell will read at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 9, in the Valley Library Rotunda on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. A book signing will follow.

Serpell’s debut novel, “The Old Drift,” explores the roots of modern Zambia. Serpell is also the author of “Seven Modes of Uncertainty,” a book of literary criticism.

Serpell is the winner of the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers. In 2014, she was selected for the Africa39, a Hay Festival project identifying the best African writers under 40, and her first published story was selected for “The Best American Short Stories” in 2009.

Serpell’s stories have been widely anthologized, and her writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Tin House, The Believer, McSweeney’s, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian and other publications.

Serpell was born in Lusaka, Zambia. She now lives in San Francisco, where she is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

The reading is part of the 2019-20 Visiting Writers Series, which brings nationally acclaimed writers to Oregon State University. This series is sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing at OSU, with support from the OSU Libraries and Press, the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film, the College of Liberal Arts, Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele, and Grass Roots Books and Music.

The event is free and open to the public. The Valley Library is at 201 SW Waldo Place, Corvallis.

College of Liberal Arts

About the OSU College of Liberal Arts: The College of Liberal Arts encompasses seven distinct schools, as well as several interdisciplinary initiatives, that focus on humanities, social sciences, and fine and performing arts. Curriculum developed by the college’s nationally and internationally-renowned faculty prepares students to approach the complex problems of the world ethically and thoughtfully, contributing to a student's academic foundation and helping to build real-world skills for a 21st century career and a purposeful life.

Story By: 

Michelle Klampe, 541-737-0784, [email protected]

Source: 

Keith Scribner, 541-737-1645, [email protected]

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