Raúl Zurita is among the most celebrated living Latin American poets. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1950, Zurita studied engineering before turning to poetry. His early work was a courageous condemnation of Augusto Pinochet's 1973 military coup.  During Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-1990)  Zurita, like many others, was arrested and tortured.  (Many prisoners were murdered.)  After his release, he co-founded a radical art collective, "Colectivo de Acción de Arte," which used performance to sustain political resistance.  He published a trilogy of books (Purgatory, Anteparadise, and The New Life) and was renowned for his high-energy public performances.  He famously organized skywriting of poetry over New York City and also had the words "Ni Pena Ni Miedo" (Neither Pity Nor Fear) bulldozed in the sands of the Atacama Desert, the site of ancient earth-sculptures. 

Zurita has received numerous awards and has been translated into a dozen languages.  His books in English translation includeAnteparadise (translated by Jack Schmitt), Purgatory (translated by Anna Deeny), INRI (translated by William Rowe) and Song for His Disappeared Love (translated by Daniel Borzutzky).  His newest work, "Inscriptions Facing the Sea," consists of 22 phrases to be inscribed in the cliffs of the north coast of Chile.

Sponsored by The Poetry and Poetics Colloquium and Workshop and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

The Poetry and Poetics Colloquium and Workshop is funded by the generous support of The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of German, the Department of English, the Department of Slavic, the Department of Classics, The Center for the Writing Arts, and The Program in Comparative Literary Studies.

JANE TAYLOR, SOUTH AFRICAN AUTHOR AND PLAYWRIGHT ON: READING/WRITING THE TRANSPLANT MEN

The CWA is proud to have Jane Taylor as the 2011 Fall Quarter Visiting Writer in Residence teaching the Art of Fiction.

There will be a Q&A, plus a book-signing.

Reading/Writing The Transplant Men will be excerpts and some dialogue around her recent novel. The Transplant Men is work of fiction that takes the first heart transplant as the premise for an exploration of our modernity and its obsession with the medicalized body. The novel also obliquely but expressly addresses recent South Africa and the body under Apartheid. She will engage in dialogue with the audience both about the writing of the book, and about the world-historical circumstances of that first heart transplant in South Africa.

JANE TAYLOR is a writer, scholar and curator from South Africa. For the past several decades, in addition to writing fiction and plays, she has been involved in cultural critique and public scholarship. In 1987 she and David Bunn co-edited From South Africa (TriQuarterly and University of Chicago Press). In 1996 Taylor designed and curated “FAULT LINES,” a series of cultural responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that followed the end of Apartheid in South Africa. As part of this program she wrote the playtext Ubu and the Truth Commission for South African artist/director William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company. In 2000 she wrote the libretto of a new opera for Kentridge, The Confessions of Zeno(performed at Lincoln Centre in New York and the MCA in Chicago). She has published two novels, Of Wild Dogs (winner of the Olive Schreinerfiction prize in South Africa) and The Transplant Men(grounded in the first heart transplant, an event that took place in South Africa).

For more information contact Stacy Oliver at the Center for the Writing Arts at 847-467-4099 or words@northwestern.edu.

SPECIAL FILM SCREENING OF THE INTERRUPTERS, PRODUCED BY ALEX KOTLOWITZ AND STEVE JAMES

"After After Cardenio" 

"After After Cardenio" will consider the making of After Cardenio.  Taylor was one of twelve playwrights commissioned by Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt to write a version of the so-called "Missing Shakespeare play", Cardenio. After Cardenio  is a meditation on the late Shakespeare plays, and the romance of his endings; it also addresses the implicit dialogue between Shakespeare and Cervantes, as wella s Shakespeare and Fletcher.  It is also a meditation on genre, given the singular endings of such late plays as The Winter's Tale.  

Taylor will be screening clips from the production, discussing the use of multi-media elements such as puppetry, music, and video. She will also give an account of the origin of the play from the seventeenth century archive. In these terms the lecture will be a consideration of the conjunction of scholarly research and creative play. Finally I Taylor will address how this play engages with its contemporary context, both within the arts and within South Africa.

JANE TAYLOR is a writer, scholar and curator from South Africa. For the past several decades, in addition to writing fiction and plays, she has been involved in cultural critique and public scholarship.  In 1987 she and David Bunn co-edited From South Africa (TriQuarterly and University of Chicago Press).  In 1996 Taylor designed and curated “FAULT LINES,” a series of cultural responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that followed the end of Apartheid in South Africa.  As part of this program she wrote the playtext Ubu and the Truth Commission for South African artist/director William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company.  In 2000 she wrote the libretto of a new opera for Kentridge, The Confessions of Zeno(performed at Lincoln Centre in New York and the MCA in Chicago).  She has published two novels, Of Wild Dogs (winner of the Olive Schreinerfiction prize in South Africa) and The Transplant Men(grounded in the first heart transplant, an event that took place in South Africa).  Taylor has been commissioned by Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt to write a version of the so-called "missing" Shakespeare play, Cardenio.  She has taught at the University of Chicago, and in South Africa at the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Western Cape; she has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford and at Cambridge Universities, and has received Mellon and Rockefeller Fellowships. 

"MAKING THE FOREIGN FAMILIAR" WITH JOURNALIST MICHAEL SLACKMAN

The Center for the Writing Arts invites you to this special event THE LITERATURE OF JOURNALISM featuring special guest MICHAEL SLACKMAN.

SLACKMAN is the Deputy Foreign Editor of the New York Times, former Berlin and Cairo bureau for the New York Times, former Los Angeles Times Cairo bureau chief and former Moscow bureau chief for Newsday.

Sponsored by the Center for the Writing Arts, Medill, Communications Residential College and The Alumnae of NU.

"REPORTING ON POPULAR CULTURE" NEW YORK TIMES CRITIC GINIA BELLAFANTE

The Center for the Writing Arts invites you to this special event THE LITERATURE OF JOURNALISM featuring special guest GINIA BELLAFANTE.

Television critic and cultural reporter for the New York Times, former cultural essayist and writer for Time Magazine and contributor to the New York Observer.

Sponsored by the Center for the Writing Arts, Medill, Communications Residential College and The Alumnae of NU.