Excerpts from both books will be read, followed by a discussion with the author and a Q & A session for the audience.

The event will be moderated by Leeya Mehta, interim director of the Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers. Refreshments will be provided at the end of the evening.

Martin Vopěnka was born in 1963. He received a degree at the Czech Technical University from the Department of Nuclear Science and Physics. He worked for the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague before launching the publishing company Prah in 1990 in the Czech Republic. His books include Ballad of Descent (Northwestern University Press, 1992),The Fifth Dimension (Barbican Press, 2016), The Back of Beyond—Travels with Benjamin (Plamen Press, 2021), and My Brother the Messiah (Barbican Press, 2021).

Leeya Mehta is the interim Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. She is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist. Her poetry collections are The Towers of Silence, and A Story of the World Before the Fence of which Tim Seibles, former Poet Laureate of Virginia, writes, “is a lush, lyrical study of memory and history.” In 2022, her work was anthologized in the Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets and in Future Work, an anthology of contemporary Indian writers from Red Hen Press.

Event Details:

Date/Time: April 26, 2023, at 6 pm

Location: Embassy of the Czech Republic
3900 Spring of Freedom Street, NW
Washington, DC 20008

RSVP required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-cheuse-salon-at-the-czech-embassy-czech-author-martin-vopenka-tickets-601768023357

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