Join us for a conversation with novelist Elena Medel and Leeya Mehta, followed by a wine reception & a book signing. This event also features work and a short talk from Stephanie Benassi.
About this event
Elena Medel is the Cheuse Center’s 2022 International Writer-in-Residence. Her debut novel, The Wonders, is winner of the Francisco Umbral Prize. She will be in conversation with Leeya Mehta, Director of the Cheuse Center. They will discuss themes of class, gender, voice, and agency.
Elena Medel is a Spanish writer and the founder and publisher of La Bella Varsovia, now a poetry imprint of Anagrama. Medel was the first woman ever to win the prestigious Francisco Umbral Prize for her debut novel, The Wonders (Algonquin), which was also longlisted for the Finestres Award and has been translated into fifteen languages. She published her prize-winning first collection of poetry, My First Bikini (Jai Alai Books), when she was sixteen years old.
Leeya Mehta is the interim Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. She is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist. Her poetry collections are The Towers of Silence, and A Story of the World Before the Fence of which Tim Seibles, former Poet Laureate of Virginia, writes, “is a lush, lyrical study of memory and history.” In 2022 her work has been anthologized in the Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets and in Future Work, an anthology of contemporary Indian writers from Red Hen Press.
*
Art: Stephanie Benassi: “Money, Beauty, Rank: The Measure of All Things”