Teju Cole

Libby Lewis Photography

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Literary Arts

Teju Cole

Past Event: Thursday, April 21, 2016

At Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

Co-Presented by The Seattle Times. Sponsored by KPLU 88.5 FM, KUOW 94.9 FM, and Seattle Met.

The original sense of the word ‘influence’ is ‘to flow into.’ For the most part, these writers that I admire… their style flows into me without my intervention, which is what explains the broad range of writers who I’ve been compared with; it reflects my reading.

— Teju Cole

On many days my primary artistic struggle is, in fact, photography because it is harder to do good work with that. I see myself as an observer of the world who has a strong drive to testify, which I can do because I have the privilege of living in New York with enough food to eat and shelter.

— Teju Cole

Cole is following in a long tradition of writerly walkers who, in the tradition of Baudelaire, make their way through urban spaces on foot and take their time doing so. Like Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, J. M. Coetzee, and W. G. Sebald (with whom he is often compared), Cole adds to the literature in his own zeitgeisty fashion. His wanderer, however, is not man of leisure, soaking up the richness of Paris or New York. The unnamed walker of Every Day moves with urgency, and does so in a cityscape that threatens to slide, avalanche-like, into violence.

— The Boston Globe

Award-winning author Teju Cole was born in America and raised in Nigeria, and is the author of two books: a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City. 

Open City is the story of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist in New York City five yearsafter 9/11. The New York Times called it “an indelible novel. Does precisely what literature should do: it brings together thoughts and beliefs, and blurs borders…A compassionate and masterly work.” It won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Internationaler Literaturpreis, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature.

Every Day is for the Thief (a novella) is about a young man living in New York City who goes to Lagos for a short and bewildering visit. It was first published in Nigeria in 2007. A revised version was published in the United States in 2014 and was a New York TImes Editors’ Pick, named a book of the year in the New York Times, the Telegraph, the Globe and NPR among others. “Shimmering . . . Cole has a way of superimposing emotional landscapes over his portraits of physical places that is transcendent. Every Day Is for the Thief is as much as an epic journey into the heart of the traveler as the place traveled.” — the Seattle Times

Teju Cole has contributed to the New York Times, The New Yorker, Qarrtsiluni, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Granta, Aperture, and several other magazines. He is currently at work on a book-length non-fiction narrative of Lagos, and is engaged in curatorial projects.

His photography has been exhibited in India and the US, published in a number of journals, and will be the subject of a solo exhibition in Italy. He has lectured widely, from the Harvard Graduate School of Design to Twitter Headquarters, and gave the 2014 Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics at Duke University.

He currently lives in Brooklyn.

 

Selected Works

Open City (2012) – Winner of multiple awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award, Internationaler Literaturpreis, the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the New York City Book Award for Fiction.
Every Day is for the Thief (2007) – a New York Times Editors’ pick, named book of the year in The New Times, and shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award

Links

Teju Cole’s homepage
BOMB Magazine: Teju Cole by Aleksandar Hemon
The New Yorker: Teju Cole’s prismatic début
Interview Magazine: Teju Cole
The New Yorker: Unmournable Bodies

Event Details

Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

1119 8th Ave
Seattle, WA 98101

View directions.

Transportation & Parking

Town Hall Seattle is centrally located at 1119 8th Ave, on the corner of 8th and Seneca. Their venue is served by frequent bus routes, is near access to light rail stations, and close to a number of parking options nearby. Please see their website for more details.

Accessibility

Open Captioning is an option for people who have hearing losses, where a captioning screen displaying the words that are spoken or sung is placed on stage. To make a request for open captioning, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10. Please note: for in-person events at Town Hall Seattle, we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure captioning services. 

Closed Captioning is an option for people who have hearing loss, where captioning displays the words that are spoken or sung at the bottom of the video for online events. Captioning is available for all online events; click the “CC” button to view captions during the event.

Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) are devices that people with hearing loss use in conjunction with their hearing device (hearing aids or cochlear implants). Town Hall Seattle has a hearing loop system, so you can switch your T-coil hearing aid to telecoil to have the stage’s microphones transmitted directly to your hearing aids. To pick up a headset, check in with any Town Hall usher when you arrive.

Sign Language Interpretation is available upon request for Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing individuals. To make a request for interpretation, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Sign Language Interpretation” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process and we will contact you to confirm details. Please note: we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure interpretation.

Wheelchair Accessible Seating and Accessible Restrooms are available in all sections at Town Hall Seattle, which is fully accessible to ticket holders with physical mobility concerns. Town Hall Seattle recommends that visitors use the 8th Avenue Entrance for events in the Great Hall, and elevators with Braille signage go to all levels within the Hall. The venue has all-gender, ADA-accessible restrooms on the lobby and Forum level. To reserve seating for a specific mobility concern, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Wheelchair Accessible or Alternative Seating Options” during ticket checkout, and we will contact you to confirm details. For more details on accessibility features at Town Hall, click here.

Guide and service dogs are welcome.

All-gender restrooms are available.

We are pleased to offer these accessibility services at our venues, and they are provided at no additional cost to ticket holders. Please contact us with any questions and feedback about how we can be more accessible and inclusive. Our Patron Services Manager is available at [email protected], or Monday-Friday from 10:00am – 5:00pm at 206.621.2230×10.

For more accessibility information, please head to lectures.org/accessibility. If you would like to make accessibility arrangements you do not see listed here, please contact our box office or select “Other Accommodations” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process, and we will contact you to confirm details.

Seating Chart