Northeastern University alumnus and award-winning writer Colin Asher ‘09, who was a Political Science major and Journalism minor, will be returning to campus to discuss his book, Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren. Northeastern Professor Carla Kaplan, Department of English, will be in conversation with Asher, setting his book within a broader context of the art of biography, and Algren within a framework of other twentieth century writers. Sponsored by the School of Journalism and the Center for the Arts (CFA), the event explores the challenges and opportunities of writing biography, while also shining a spotlight on the life and works of American writer Nelson Algren, who is perhaps best known for The Man with the Golden Arm, a novel that won the first National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name.
Colin Asher’s book and expertise has been featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, as well as The Believer, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more. An instructor at CUNY, he was a 2015/2016 Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography.
Carla Kaplan is Distinguished Professor of American Literature, the Founding Director of Northeastern University’s Humanities Center, and Chair of the Editorial Board for Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is the author of Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, a ground-breaking group biography that uncovers the untold story of the white women of the black Harlem Renaissance, and which has been featured and reviewed in various publications, including Publishers Weekly, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Jewish Advocate, and more.
Please join us in welcoming Colin Asher to campus, alongside Professor Carla Kaplan, for a fascinating conversation followed by refreshments on Tuesday, February 11, from 6 – 7:30 p.m. in the Ryder Hall Theatre Lab, Ryder Hall, 3rd floor.