Join us on Friday, July 8th 2022 at 6:00pm, to learn about Fellows Rich Benjamin, Alex Marzano-Leznevich, and Dagmawi Woubshet.

Rich Benjamin, Writing, USA

A cultural critic, anthropologist, and public speaker, Rich Benjamin is currently working on a family memoir that is also a portrait of America (forthcoming from Pantheon Books). A deep, ten-year effort to date, the book combines archival research, oral history, political analysis, and lyricism. He is the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, selected for an Editor’s Choice award from the American Library Association. Benjamin’s work appears regularly in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and on US National Public Radio (NPR).

Alex Marzano-Leznevich, Writing, USA

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, which received a Lambda Literary Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the Prix des libraires du Quebec, the Grand Prix des Lectrices Elle, and the Prix France Inter-JDD. It was translated into 11 languages and is in development with HBO. The recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Eccles Centre at the British Library, and the National Endowment for the Arts, their work has twice been selected for Best American Essays. Their second book, Both and Neither, is forthcoming.

Dagmawi Woubshet, Writing, USA

Dagmawi Woubshet is a writer, translator, and curator. He is the Ahuja Family Presidential Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Calendar of Loss (2015). His personal and critical essays have appeared in various publications, including Callaloo, Transition, and the Atlantic. Originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he now lives in Philadelphia.

Welcome cocktail at 6:00pm
Presentations begin at 6:15pm


Please write to news@civitella.org to reserve your spot. 
Please wear masks inside the Castle.