What's Good: Daniel Levin Becker in Conversation with Nafkote Tamirat

The Center for Writers & Translators is delighted to host an evening in celebration of What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language by Daniel Levin Becker. Praised by the New York Times as "an often hilarious, surprisingly moving and always joyful paean to rap’s relationship to words," What's Good was named a Book of the Year by New Yorker and Globe & Mail editors. Since Levin Becker is currently teaching a course on translation and creative writing at AUP, we hope to hear something about his recent translations from French as well (Laurent Mauvignier's The Birthday Party was published last month; titles by Jakuta Alikavazovic and Eric Chevillard are forthcoming). An early contributing editor to the lyrics annotation site Rap Genius, Levin Becker has written about music for The Believer, NPR, SF Weekly, and Dusted Magazine, among others. His first book, Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature (Harvard UP, 2012), recounts his induction into the French literary collective Oulipo, of which he became the youngest member in 2009. For this event he will be in conversation with novelist Nafkote Tamirat, author of The Parking Lot Attendant (Henry Holt, 2018). Tamirat has written about 90s movies for The Paris Review and was a contributor to the interactive fiction series "Daughter, First", a collaboration between Glamour and Lenny Letter. She is a graduate of Yale and Columbia University and has worked as a teacher, a horoscope writer, a tour guide and a translator.

This event is open to the public; non-AUP students, staff or faculty should RSVP dmedinaup.edu in advance and bring picture ID to the door.