Lannan Readings & Conversations
Jhumpa Lahiri
with Peter SteinWednesday April 15 2009
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London and raised in Rhode Island, growing up with "conflicting expectations...to be Indian by Indians and American by Americans." Lahiri's abilities to convey the oldest cultural conflicts in the most immediate fashion and to achieve the voices of many different characters are among the unique qualities of her books. Her recent collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, takes the reader from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, and the bittersweet stories avoid sentimentality without abandoning compassion. Lahiri is also the author of the story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, and the novel, The Namesake, which was adapted into a film in 2007. Since 2005, Lahiri has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center, an organization that works to advance literature, defend free expression, and foster international literary fellowship.
Peter Stein is Executive Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest of its kind in the world. Prior posts include Deputy Director for Programming at the Jewish Museum of San Francisco (now The Contemporary Jewish Museum) and Executive Producer at KQED, San Francisco's public television station.
