Aimee Nezhukumatathil is a young poet in whose work food and the pleasure of eating have found a special place. Her elegant and comical, sensual and delicate style creates poems like Are you making Dump Cake, Cheese Curds, The First Time and Fruit Cocktail Tree. They are part of her latest collection of poems Miracle Fruit (2003) and received the Tupelo Press Jury Prize for Poetry. Some of her previous work has been published under the name Fishbone. She has been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry and received a prestigious poetry scholarship from the University of Wisconsin in 2000.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago in 1974 as the daughter of a Philippine mother and an Indian father whose different cultural backgrounds play a significant role in her poems.
She teaches English at the University of New York in Fredonia.
John Lanchester, born in Hamburg in 1962, is the author of the well-received book The Debt of Pleasure, (Prometheus 1996). The book contains elements of a cookbook, a thriller and an excentric, philosophical exposé. The hero, distinguished connoisseur Tarquin Winot, tells of his wide range of adventures and thoughts: varying from the psychology of a menu to the perverse history of a peach. The book won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Betty Trask Award, de Hawthornden Prize, de American Prize and the Julia Child Award voor ‘Writing about eating’.
Lanchester grew up in the Far East and studied in the U.K.. He writes for several newspapers and magazines including Granta, The New Yorker, The Daily Telegraph and The Observer for which he was a restaurant critic. His latest book Fragrant Harbour was published in 2002 and takes place in in Hong Kong.
Stacey Knecht (New York, 1957) moderated the evening. Stacey is chief editor of the website www.literairnederland.nl, translator, and reviews Czech literature for the NRC-Handelsblad. She lives in Zwolle.
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