Betty Shamieh on Too Soon, in conversation with Han Ong

Join us at the Brooklyn Heights branch to hear Betty Shamieh discuss her novel Too Soon with Han Ong.

A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women.

Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic—that might garner international attention—in the West Bank. Her mother, Naya, and grandmother, Zoya, hatch a plot to match her with Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz, since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster...

With biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices.

 

Betty Shamieh is a Palestinian American writer and the author of fifteen plays. She is the playwright-in-residence at the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Her six New York play premieres include the sold-out off-Broadway runs of Roar and Malvolio, a sequel to Twelfth Night, which were both New York Times Critic’s Picks. Shamieh was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and named a UNESCO Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue. She is a founding artistic director of The Semitic Root, a collective that supports innovative theatre cocreated by Arab and Jewish Americans. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, she lives with her family in San Francisco.

Han Ong's stories are in the New Yorker. He is a MacArthur Fellow and the winner of the Berlin Prize, from the American Academy in Berlin.

 

Books will be available for purchase from the Center for Fiction. 

This is a free event. Registration is required.