Christopher Beha, NoViolet Bulawayo, Renato Cisneros and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Reading

Join us on Monday, October 5, 2026 at the Civitella Castle for a reading by Writing Fellows Christopher Beha, NoViolet Bulawayo, Renato Cisneros and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. We will welcome you with light refreshments at 6:00 PM.

Monday, October 5, 2026

6 PM Welcome cocktail

6:15 PM Presentations

Christopher Beha is an American novelist, essayist, and memoirist based in New York. His novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award. His most recent work, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer, was published in February by Penguin Press. His new novel, Oppo, will be published next year by Tin House/Zando Books.

NoViolet Bulawayo is the author of the novels Glory and We Need New Names. Her books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the International Literature Award;longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize; and won the PEN/ Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for first fiction, and the Hurston/ Wright Legacy Award for fiction, among other honors. NoViolet grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and earned her MFA at Cornell University, where she currently teaches.

Renato Cisneros is a Peruvian journalist and writer. In his home country, he has hosted current affairs programs on radio and television. His novel La distancia que nos separa (Editorial Planeta, 2015) has sold more than 80,000 copies in Peru alone and has been acclaimed by the Peruvian and international press. His most recent novel, El mundo que vimos arder (Alfaguara, 2023), was a finalist for the 2023 Alfaguara Prize. Renato currently lives in Madrid, where he is working on his next novel and teaching online creative writing classes.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist and the author of The First Woman (2021), Manchester Happened (2019), and Kintu (2014). She is a recipient of the Jhalak Prize, the Prix Transfuge Du Meilleur Premier Roman, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Global Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She has been a Writer-in-Residence at NIAS-KNAW, a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin, and a Franke Fellow at Yale University. Makumbi has a PhD from Lancaster University and has taught in several universities in Britain. She is working on her fifth book, The Second Harvest.