The Columbia Alumni Association presents “Unlocking Creativity: Inspire, Develop, Contribute,” an alumni panel discussion with Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, on Friday, October 15, from 6-8pm in the Allen Room and Atrium, Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Notable alumni, including Columbia University School of the Arts Writing Program alumna Kiran Desai (‘99SOA), will discuss what inspires creativity, how to develop craft, and how Columbia contributes to creative development.
Other alumni participants are Brian Dennehy (‘60CC), Tom Kitt (‘96CC), Perri Peltz (‘84PH), and Asali Solomon (‘95BC). There will also be a special presentation, “Living the Jazz Aesthetic,” by Columbia University Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program Chris Washburne (’92, ’94, ‘99GSAS) and the SYOTOS Band.
School of the Arts Writing alumna Kiran Desai won the 2009 Columbia University Medal for Excellence. She was born in New Delhi, India, and lived there until she was 14. She and her mother then lived in England for a year, and they then moved to the United States where Desai studied creative writing. She is a novelist known for prose that explores the emotional complexities and struggles of the modern immigrant experience. While a student at Columbia, she wrote “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,” which won the Betty Trask Award, given for the best first novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations under the age of 35. Her second novel, “The Inheritance of Loss,”won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. Her next novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” will be published in 2012.
A reception after the discussion will feature music by the Columbia University Jazz Ensemble and an alumni artist exhibition, presented by the Columbia Alumni Arts League, a program of the CAA.
Contact the CAA at caaassembly@columbia.edu or (212) 851-7935 for more information, or visit the event website.
