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About the speakers:
Dr. Alma Gottlieb is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Francophone and Lusophone West Africa. Her BA in French and anthropology is from Sarah Lawrence College, and MA/PhD in anthropology are from University of Virginia. She began conducting research with the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire in 1979. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she is the author or editor of nine books, including two memoirs co-authored with Philip Graham about their time among the Beng: Parallel Worlds: An Anthropologist and a Writer Encounter Africa (winner of the Victor Turner Award) and Braided Worlds. Dr. Gottlieb is Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and, since 2014, has been a Visiting Scholar in Anthropology at Brown University.
Philip Graham is a writer whose work has been reprinted and/or translated into languages. His BA in English/creative writing is from Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied with Grace Paley; his MFA in creative writing is from City College/CUNY, where he studied with Donald Barthelme and Frederic Tuten. A former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, he is the author of eight books, most recently the novel, What the Dead Can Say. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, North American Review, Fiction, Los Angeles Review and elsewhere; his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. Graham is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-founder (and currently Editor-at-Large) of the award-winning literary/arts journal Ninth Letter.
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