A Reading and Conversation with Writer and Urbanist Nadia Owusu

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Please join us for an evening with Whiting Award-winning writer and urbanist NADIA OWUSU. Nadia will engage us with a reading, dialogue with professors, Q&A with audience members and a book signing. Her debut memoir, Aftershocks, was named a best book of 2021 by Time, Vogue, Esquire, NPR, and over a dozen others. It was a New York Times editor's choice pick and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times Magazine, Granta, The Paris Review Daily, The Guardian, Bon Appétit, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first novel.

From "Aftershocks," Once, when I was a very little girl in a bubble bath, I asked my father why I had a belly button. He was sitting on the toilet lid reading while I splashed. He peered at me over the top of his book. "So you know where your center is," he said. "Why do I need to know where my center is?" I asked. "So you don't lose your balance," he said. "Your center is where all the different parts of who you are come together. It used to connect you to your mother and to the beginning of human history in Africa."

NADIA OWUSU is a Ghanaian and Armenian-American writer and urbanist. Her debut memoir, Aftershocks, was selected as a best book of 2021 by Time, Vogue, Esquire, The Guardian, NPR, and others. It was one of President Barack Obama's favorite books of the year, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and a 2021 Goodreads Choice Award nominee.
In 2019, Nadia was the recipient of a Whiting Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Orion, Granta, The Paris Review Daily, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Literary Review, Slate, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, and others.
Nadia is the Director of Storytelling at Frontline Solutions, a Black-owned consulting firm that helps social-change organizations to define goals, execute plans, and evaluate impact. She is a graduate of Pace University (BA) and Hunter College (MS). She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction at the Mountainview low-residency program where she currently teaches. She lives in Brooklyn.

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