Selected Shorts: Coming of Age Around the World

PEN American Center, the U.S. center of the international writers’ group, co-presents this evening of powerful short fiction about the challenges of growing up in the modern world, for characters ranging from child soldiers in Africa to suburban American teens.

Featuring Oprah Book Club pick author, Uwem Akpan.

Performance playlist:

Introductions by Michael Roberts
Director of PEN American Center

My Parents Bedroom
by Uwem Akpan
performed by Robin Miles

Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice
by Nam Le
performed by Jason Ma

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international human rights and literary organization. Throughout its 85-year history, PEN American Center has remained a writer-centered organization in which members play a leading role. PEN presidents, such as Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, and Salman Rushdie, have repeatedly placed themselves at the forefront of the struggle to oppose censorship and defend writers. PEN American Center is comprised of 3,300 professional members who represent the most distinguished writers, translators and editors in the United States. PEN also welcomes associate members who come from all parts of the literary community, and who share PEN’s ideals. To learn more about becoming a member of PEN and to get involved in our work to defend writers and free expression, visit: www.pen.org/join.

Uwem Akpan was born in the village of Ikot Akpan Eda in southern Nigeria. After studying philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga Universities, he studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of East Africa. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. “My Parents’ Bedroom,” a story from his debut collection Say You’re One of Them, to be published in June, was one of five short stories by African writers chosen as finalists for The Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2007, Akpan began a teaching assignment at a Jesuit college in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He has received the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Phillips Exeter Academy. His fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, Harvard Review, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 and The Best Australian Stories 2007. At present, he is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review. His debut collection of short stories, The Boat, will be published in May.

Jason Ma has appeared on Broadway in Sly Fox, Miss Saigon, Shogun, Prince of Central Park and Chu Chem. His Off Broadway credits include Hamlet at the Classic Stage Company, Antony and Cleopatra at The Public Theater and The Merchant of Venice at The Pearl Theatre Company. He has performed regionally at such theatre companies as the Yale Repertory Theatre, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta. He is the audiobook narrator of A Free Life by Ha Jin and the upcoming The Ginseng Hunter by Jeff Talarigo, both directed by Robin Miles.

Robin Miles’ theatre work includes Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour on Broadway, Jonathan Larson’s J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation and many other plays. Her television credits include Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, New York Undercover and National Geographic’s Tales from the Wild. She has narrated over 130 audio books, earned Audie nominations for both narrating and directing, has won several narrating awards and is an AudioFile magazine featured narrator. She is the director of the recent recording of Alex Haley’s Roots and narrator of many works of Edwidge Danticat. Listen closely, and you’ll even hear her voice at the American Museum of Natural History.