Ghost Season

Our new project series Wings with Roots - Dynamic Belongings is inspired by the renowned philosopher, professor and writer Kwame Anthony Appiah and his book The Lies that Bind - Rethinking Identity (Profile Books 2018). The new series is dedicated to diverse worldviews and alternate forms of knowledge production and invites us to open up to literary voices that convey a dynamic understanding of identity. Excellent Black writers tell stories from plural worlds with all the challenges and creative potentials that unfold in our global and diversely intertwined world(s).
 

Ghost Season - Reading with novelist Fatin Abbas & conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah and donna Kukama

Fatin Abbas, born in Khartoum/ Sudan and raised in New York, earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, New York. She will read from her debut novel Ghost Season followed by a discussion with Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah moderated by South African artist Prof. donna Kukama (professor of Contemporary Art/Global South at KHM). The five central characters in Abbas' novel, set in current Sudan, reveal intimate and unexpected experiences of personal belongings and boundaries. How do the panelists view these dynamic identities, also with regard to their specific backgrounds and personal “Wings with Roots”?

Here you can find our Netiquette.

About Ghost Season from Fatin Abbas
 

A dynamic, beautifully orchestrated debut novel connecting five characters caught in the crosshairs of conflict on the Sudanese border. Weaving a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan into the lives of these captivating characters, Fatin Abbas explores the porous and perilous nature of borders—whether they be national, ethnic, or religious — and the profound consequences for those who cross them. Ghost Season is a gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction. [read more]

Fatin Abbas

Fatin Abbas is an international writer and journalist. Born in Khartoum, Sudan, and raised in New York City, she gained her BA in English from the University of Cambridge, her PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, the City University of New York, where she was awarded both the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize and the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award for her writing. She has published essays and reports in The Nation, Le Monde diplomatique and Die Zeit, among others, and short prose in the magazines Granta and Freeman's. She has taught fiction writing at MIT and the Pratt Institute in New York and comparative literature at Bard College Berlin. Dave Eggers commented on Ghost Season, her first novel: “Absolutely fascinating ... an extremely important novel.” Fatin Abbas currently lives in Berlin.

© Marie Constantinesco

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah (born May 8, 1954, London, England) is a British-born American philosopher, novelist, and scholar of African and African American studies, best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of culture.Appiah was the son of Joseph Appiah, a Ghanaian-born barrister, and Peggy Cripps, daughter of the British statesman Sir Stafford Cripps. He attended Bryanston School and later Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1982. He taught philosophy, African studies, and African American studies at Yale University (1981–86), Cornell University (1986–89), Duke University (1990–91), and Harvard University (1999–2002). In 2002 he joined the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he stayed until moving to New York University in 2014 until today.

© NYU

donna Kukama

donna Kukama is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice engages performance art as a tool for creative research. Her work presents institutions, monuments, gestures of protest, rumors, and fleeting moments that are as real as they are fictitious. She has presented her work in renowned institutions and museums, such as the Tate Modern in London, Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham; Padiglione de’Arte Contemporanea Milano in Milan; South African National Gallery in Cape Town; Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp; nGbK in Berlin; and the New Museum in New York. She questions how histories are narrated and subverts how value systems are constructed, often centering methods perspectives that originate from the Global South. Through her practice, she weaves major with minor aspects of histories, introducing fragile and brief moments of ‘strangeness’ within sociopolitical settings. Kukama holds a permanent position as a Professor in Contemporary Art with a focus on the Global South at KHM Academy in Cologne.

© donna Kukama

Gefördert von: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung/bpb, Kunststiftung NRW, Stadt Köln

In Kooperation mit der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM)

*Free admission for KHM members with KHM access card