Conversations from the Cullman Center, LIVE from NYPL: New York, My Village: Uwem Akpan with Elif Batuman

The award-winning author’s debut novel explores tribalism everywhere, from Nigerian villages to New York publishing houses.

Coming to New York on a prestigious fellowship, Nigerian editor Ekong Udousoro is about to begin the opportunity of a lifetime: to learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry from its epicenter. His colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, but he is soon exposed to a colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly and a bedrock of white cultural superiority and racist assumptions about Africa, its peoples, and worst of all, its food. In New York, My Village Uwem Akpan melds humor, tenderness, and pain to create a saga of unanticipated strife that proves there is still hope in sharing our stories.

Uwem Akpan researched and wrote New York, My Village during his 2013–2014 Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He discusses his book with best-selling author Elif Batuman.

Produced in partnership with The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

The program will be streamed live on this page. If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

• Borrow: NYPL Catalog
• E-Book app: SimplyE, available on iOS and Android
• Purchase: The Library Shop — proceeds benefit the New York Public Library

Don't have a New York Public Library card? Get one here!

• Travelers, by Helon Habila — NYPL Catalog; Bookshare
• Shelter in Place, by David Leavitt — NYPL Catalog; NYPL Talking Books
• The Old Drift, by Namwali Serpell — NYPL Catalog; NYPL Talking Books; Bookshare

Uwem Akpan’s fiction and autobiographical essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the Nigerian Guardian, O: the Oprah Magazine, and more. His collection of stories, Say You’re One of Them, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa Region), the PEN Open Book Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was the 2009 Oprah Book Club selection. He is from Ikot Akpan Eda in the Niger Delta in Nigeria and teaches creative writing at the University of Florida-Gainesville.

Elif Batuman’s novel, Either/Or, is forthcoming from Penguin Press. It is a sequel to her first novel, The Idiot (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Batuman is also the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She is a staff writer at the New Yorker and has a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford. She was a Cullman Center Fellow with Uwem Akpan in 2013-2014.

Sign up for our e-newsletters to stay up to date on upcoming events and Library offerings.

Please submit all press inquiries to Sara Beth Joren at least 48 hours before the event: email sarabethjoren@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

For all other questions and inquiries, please email publicprograms@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

The New York Public Library's free services and resources are made possible thanks to the support of the Friends of the Library. Join this group of Library lovers and take advantage of special membership benefits, like invitations to members-only virtual events, discounts at the Library Shop, and more. Join now.

The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.

LIVE from NYPL is made possible by the support of Library patrons and friends, as well as by the continuing generosity of Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos, and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Public Education Endowment Fund.