Writers Read Presents Padma Viswanathan

For our first event of the 2024-2025 season, Writers Read presents novelist, memoirist, and translator Padma Viswanathan. Padma Viswanathan’s novels have been published in eight countries and shortlisted for the PEN USA Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and others.

Viswanathan’s short fiction, essays and translations have appeared in Granta, The Boston Review, BRICK, and elsewhere. Her full-length translations include São Bernardo, by Brazilian novelist Graciliano Ramos, and Where We Stand by philosopher Djamila Ribeiro. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas—Fayetteville, where she is founding director of the Arkansas International Writer-at-Risk Residency Program.

On September 30, 2024, in the Library Seminar Room LB-362 (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.), Padma Viswanathan will join us to read from and discuss her newest novel, The Charterhouse of Padma (2024).

An experimental novel in two parts, The Charterhouse of Padma is about two women named Padma, living in America’s heartland, who unearth shocking secrets about the men they love and question the lives they chose. The Charterhouse of Padma has been described as a “smart, scintillating journey of a text shows what thinking as writing might look like” and “a unique domestic drama: one that manages to be intimate, bewildering, funny as all get out, smart as heck, and convincingly real.” A question-and-answer period will then follow the reading.

Writers Read is part of Concordia University’s Creative Writing program and is supported by the Department of English and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Writers Read, directed by Professor Sina Queyras since 2011, invites renowned and emerging authors, both Canadian and international, to read from and discuss their work with students and local audiences. In addition to readings, the series includes Master Classes and professional developmental activities spanning the school year.