Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities - Writing, Exile and Cunning

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and had short stays in Italy and France before immigrating to the United States. He is best know for his memoir Out of Egypt, an account of his Jewish-Turkish-Italian family's life in Alexandria, called a "a classic memoir of modern Jewish life" by The New York Times. He is also the author of False Papers-fourteen essays that explore themes of identity, home, and exile-and has edited a collection of essays, Letters of Transit. Aciman currently teaches in the French Department at the City University of New York Graduate College. He will discuss the creative process of translating his immigrant experiences and feelings of cultural loss into the written word. Following the talk, he will be joined on stage by John Monroe, a faculty member in the History Department, for a public interview.