Join us for an Evening with Zadie Smith and Nathan Englander, in Conversation

General admission is $100 a ticket, which includes a special gift bag with books by both authors.  VIP seating for $250 guarantees seating in the front center rows, pre-signed copies of Zadie and Nathan's books, as well as a complimentary copy of "They Were Very Beautiful.  Such Things Are":  Memoirs from Dadaab, Kenya and Lewiston, Maine, an anthology edited by Matawi which features the life stories of refugees in their own words.   

All event proceeds will benefit the Dadaab Young Women's Scholarship Initiative, founded in 2008 to increase access to educational opportunity for refugee women and girls on the Kenya/Somalia border.  Please purchase your tickets in advance by clicking below to register.  A limited number of tickets may be available at the door.  Tickets are non-refundable and tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.  Thank you to Penguin Press for becoming an event sponsor and generously donating copies of Changing My Mind, Zadie's newest work.

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975, and continues to live in the area. Her first novel, WHITE TEETH, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers' First Book Award. Her second novel, THE AUTOGRAPH MAN, won The Jewish QuarterlyWingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith's third novel, ON BEAUTY, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won The Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award (Eurasia Section) and the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has also edited an anthology of short stories entitled THE BOOK OF OTHER PEOPLE. Her collection of essays CHANGING MY MIND was published in November 2009.  Zadie Smith is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Nathan Englander is the author of the story collection FOR THE RELIEF OF UNBEARABLE URGES (Knopf, 1999) and the novel THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES (Knopf, 2007).  His fiction and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Anthology and numerous editions of Best American Short Stories.  Englander was selected as one of the "20 Writers for the 21st Century" by The New Yorker, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.  He is currently at work on a play based on his short story "The Twenty-seventh Man."

Matawi 501(c)(3), meaning "branches" in Swahili, supports education, civic engagement, and leadership development in the global refugee community.  Through a range of programs and initiatives, we seek to responsively identify and nurture strengths, skills, and potential for growth across the diaspora.  With an awareness that refugee needs and contexts are in constant flux, we currently emphasize facilitation of access to higher education for Somali refugee women through the Dadaab Young Women's Scholarship Initiative; the gathering and sharing of life-stories; and cultural brokering between resettling populations and local community agencies.   For more information, please see:  www.matawi.org

Photo credits:  Zadie Smith (Roderick Field)/Nathan Englander (Rachel Zucker).  Matawi is a registered 501(c)(3) organization.