Worldbuilding Initiative Distinguished Lecturer: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

In conversation with ASU's Mitchell Jackson, join the National Book Foundation's '5 under 35' honoree Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for a reading from his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars. Co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute, this event is an opportunity to meet the author and hear about his writing process. Books will be available for sale, courtesy of ASU Bookstores!

4 p.m. AZ Welcome Reception at Ross-Blakley Hall, hosted the Humanities Institute

5 p.m. AZ (6 p.m. MST) Lecture at Armstrong Hall (and on Zoom)

This event is hybrid and is free to the public.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black (Mariner Books, 2018). Of the collection, George Saunders notes, “These stories are an excitement and a wonder: strange, crazed, urgent and funny, yet classical in the way they take on stubborn human problems: the depravities of capitalism, love struggling to assert itself within heartless systems. The wildly talented Adjei-Brenyah has made these edgy tales immensely charming, via his resolute, heartful, immensely likeable narrators, capable of seeing the world as blessed and cursed at once.”

Adjei-Brenyah’s debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, (Penguin Random House, 2023) was longlisted for the The Center for Fiction’s 2023 First Novel Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. About the book, Kiese Laymon says, “In a narrative world where the real is growingly more unbelievable than the make believe, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars is an uncanny, singular feat of literature. I’ve never read satire so bruising, so brolic, so tender and really, so pitch-perfect.”

Adjei-Brenyah was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica and Longreads.

Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University.