Cornell University
Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70 Free Event
Free Event

The Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading by NoViolet Bulawayo Alexandra Kleeman
Thursday, February 6, 5 p.m.
Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70

The Spring 2025 Barbara & David Zalaznick Creative Writing Reading Series kicks off with the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading featuring NoViolet Bulawayo, fiction writer, and Alexandra Kleeman, fiction writer.

Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the novel Something New Under the Sun, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, as well as the short story collection Intimations and the novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine. Her work deals in issues related to climate catastrophe, embodiment, and late-capitalist realism. Her novel-in-progress, comprising five novellas set on different islands, traces the rise and fall of systems of monetization and exchange. The recipient of the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, and Bard Fiction Prize, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 2022. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others, and other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, VOGUE, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. She has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, MacDowell, Djerassi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Bergman Estate. A Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine, she writes essays and long-form profiles about cultural figures and lives in Ithaca and Colorado.

Channeling the potent rhythms of the storytellers who raised her in Zimbabwe, NoViolet Bulawayo weaves stories that are at once disarmingly playful and devastatingly real.  Her debut novel, We Need New Names, identified her as one of the great storytellers of displacement and arrival. “Nearly as incisive about the American immigrant experience as it is about the failings of Mugabe’s regime” (NPR), it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize—marking the first time a Black woman from Africa received this recognition— and won the PEN/Hemingway Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and many other honors. With her second novel Glory, Bulawayo establishes herself as a new and essential voice in the fiction of the contemporary African diaspora. Inspired by the 2017 coup that ousted Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader of nearly four decades, the novel is a "a satire with sharper teeth, angrier, and also very, very funny” (The New York Times Book Review), populated by a chorus of animals who unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination. Although Zimbabwe is the immediate inspiration for this thrilling story, Glory resonates in a time of global clamor, with resistance movements across the world challenging different forms of oppression and giving voice to the bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. The most translated author in modern Zimbabwean history, Bulawayo grew up in Zimbabwe and earned her MFA from Cornell University, where she was a recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. She has also held fellowships at Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford.

The Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading was created in 2002 by family and friends of Richard Cleaveland, Cornell Class of ’74, to honor his memory.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Free and open to the public

Book signing and reception to follow the reading.

We are proud to partner with Buffalo Street Books at this event. Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca’s community-owned cooperative bookstore, dedicated to re-imagining the ways an independent bookstore can serve its community. The authors' books are available online, in store, and on site at the reading. Show your student ID at BSB and get 10% off every day!

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Masking is encouraged.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask that you please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with assistive listening technology. If you need additional accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us as soon as possible.

For more information about this event visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick or email englishevents@cornell.edu

This event is presented by the Department of Literatures in English / Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.

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