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Transcendent Kingdom

A Conversation With Novelist Yaa Gyasi

Wednesday April 7, 2021
5:00 pm EDT

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Join us for a zoom conversation with novelist Yaa Gyasi, a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2016 “5 Under 35” Award, and a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. We will be talking about Gyasi’s recent novel, Transcendent Kingdom, published in 2020 by Knopf, and about the writing life. We will be taking audience questions.

Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi is the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel Homegoing and a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2016 “5 Under 35” Award. Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, was published in September 2020. She lives in New York City.

Rachel Gordan is an assistant professor of religion and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida, where she is the Shorstein fellow in American Jewish Culture. Her UF Quest course is currently reading Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom.

Sponsors

  • Samuel “Bud” Shorstein Professorship in American Jewish Culture and Society
  • University of Florida Department of Religion
  • University of Center for the Humanities in the Public Sphere
  • University of Florida Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research
  • University of Florida Center for African Studies
  • University of Florida Office of the Chief Diversity Officer
  • University of Florida Department of English, MFA@FLA Creative Writing Program