panel discussion with American poet Charles Simic

The American Center

and

The PEN All-India Centre, Mumbai

take pleasure in inviting you to a panel discussion with American poet

Charles Simic

on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 7:30 p.m.

Panel members include Jane Bhandari, Priya Sarukkai Chabria

and Sampurna Chattarji

Conference Room, 5th Floor, American Center,

4 New Marine Lines, Churchgate

Please join us for refreshments from 6:45 p.m.

RSVP

Ashwati, tel 2262-4590 x. 2253.

Poet Simic will join us via DVC

Please be seated by 7:15 p.m.

For security reasons, kindly be prepared

to check camera cell phones upon entering

About Charles Simic:

Professor of English, University of New Hampshire, Durham, since 1973, is a
native of Yugoslavia who immigrated to the United States during his teens,
has been hailed as one of his adopted homeland's finest poets. Simic's work,
which includes "Unending Blues", "Walking the Black Cat", and "Hotel
Insomnia", has won numerous awards, among them the 1990 Pulitzer Prize ("The
World Doesn't End") and the coveted MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." He
was US Poet Laureate 2007. Although he writes in English, Simic raws upon
his own experiences of war-torn Belgrade to compose poems about the physical
and spiritual poverty of modern life. His honors include PEN International
award for translation, 1970, 1980, Edgar Allan Poe award, American Academy
of Poets, 1975, award, The National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1976,
American Association for Applied Linguistics award, 1976, Harriet Monroe
poetry award, University of Chicago., 1980, CiCastignola award, Poetry
Society of America, 1980, Wallance Students prize, The Academy of American
Poets; fellow Guggenheim fellow, 1972-73, National Endowment for the Arts,
1974-75, 1979-80, Fulbright Travelling fellow, 1982, Ingram Merrill fellow,
1983-84, Mac Arthur fellow, 1984-89.

About the panel members:

Jane Bhandari, born in Edinburgh has lived in India for 40 years and is a
writer and occasional painter. She co-ordinates "Loquations", a Mumbai
poetry reading group, and has published two volumes of poetry, "Single Bed"
and "Aquarius". She has also written two collections of short stories for
children, "The Round Square Chapatti" and "The Long Thin Jungle". A third
collection of poems and a novel are in progress.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet and novelist. Her books include the novels
"The Other Garden" (1995) and "Generation 14" (2008) and the poetry
collection, "Dialogue and Other Poems" (2005, reprint 2006). Her second
poetry collection "Not Springtime Yet" is forthcoming in October 2008. She
edits the website Talking Poetry (South Asia) and has edited two
anthologies, "All Poetry is Protest" and "50 Poets, 50 Poems". She has
collaborated with artists in painting, cinema and classical dance on several
projects. Her collection "Love: Stories" is forthcoming in 2009.

Sampurna Chattarji is a poet, fiction-writer and translator. Her debut
poetry collection "Sight May Strike You Blind" was published by the Sahitya
Akademi in 2007 and reprinted in 2008. Her poetry has featured on RTHK Radio
4 Hong Kong and in the international documentary "Voices in Wartime"
directed by Seattle-based Rick King. Her translation of Sukumar Ray's poetry
and prose titled "Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray" was first
published in 2004 by Penguin and reissued in 2008 as "Wordygurdyboom!" Her
books for children include "The Greatest Stories Ever Told" (Penguin/Puffin,
2004) "Mulla Nasruddin" (Penguin/Puffin, 2008) and "Three Brothers and the
Flower of Gold" (Scholastic, 2008) and her first novel "Rupture" is
forthcoming from HarperCollins. She has also translated the contemporary
Bengali poet Joy Goswami. She was awarded the Charles Wallace Creative
Writing Scholarship to Edinburgh University in 2005 and the Highlights
Foundation Scholarship to the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, New
York in 2006.