This online event, part of Carnegie Hall’s citywide spring Afrofuturism Festival, features an evening of readings and discussion between award-winning authors Samuel R. Delany and Namwali Serpell moderated by Smaran Dayal. https://italianacademy.columbia.edu/events/afrofuturist-writing-namwali-serpell-and-samuel-r-delany

In 2016, Samuel R. Delany was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. He is the author of the award-winning novels Babel-17 and Dark Reflections, as well as Nova, Dhalgren, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series. A retired professor, he lives in Philadelphia with his partner Dennis, and his website is www.samueldelany.com.

Zambian-American writer Namwali Serpell’s novel The Old Drift (2019) received numerous awards including the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize for fiction “that confronts racism and explores diversity,” the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Grand Prix des Associations Littéraires Prize for Belles-Lettres, and the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. She was co-recipient of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction (with Yiyun Li). She is a Professor of English at Harvard University. Her website is www.namwaliserpell.com.

Smaran Dayal is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University, where he is writing a dissertation on literary Afrofuturism, and a Public Humanities Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York. He recently co-edited an anthology of American literature, Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts (2020).

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