Novelist and essayist Laila Lalami to conduct reading at CSB

Novelist, short story writer and essayist Laila Lalami will read from her work at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, at the Teresa Reception Center, College of Saint Benedict. The event is free and open to the public.

Lalami's most recent book, "The Moor's Account" (336 pages, Pantheon Books, 2014) is a fictional account of the life of a Moroccan slave who accompanied a group of Spanish conquistadors to the Gulf of Mexico area of Florida in the early 1500s. At the center of the story is Estebanico, a Moroccan who is a slave to one of the explorers.

Disease kills some of the conquistadors, as does the native population. The rest, including Estebanico, are taken captive. But they escape, and Lalami "is far more interested in what happens to the men after they escape and make their way from Florida to Mexico, bearing witness to wondrous terrain and tribal people," wrote Jeffrey Renard Allen in a review published by the New York Times Sunday Book Review.

"And, we see Estebancio become a new, braver and better man. At one point he vows: 'I could not continue to be involved in the conquest. I would go to Mexico and there I would get a contract that made legal the freedom that God had bestowed on me at birth,' " Allen continued.

"The Moor's Account" won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award and was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is also on the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award shortlist and the Booker Prize longlist.

Lalami also wrote "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits," which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; and "Secret Son," which was on the Orange Prize longlist.

Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation and the Guardian. Lalami is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.

The event is being presented by the Literary Arts Institute (LAI). The LAI, founded in 1997, fosters creative writing, publishing and interaction between students and writers.

LAI brings nationally recognized authors to the college for a visiting writers series (Writers Writing), promotes literary events, holds conferences (Inside Books), supports publications (S. Mariella Gable Prize), and encourages the artistry of fine letterpress (Welle Book Arts Studio). With its local and national partners, such as Graywolf Press, LAI is able to bring writers and their work together with readers on campus, in Minnesota and beyond.