A collaboration between the USC Dornsife Department of English and The Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation, the Distinguished Speakers Series at the University of Southern California is an annual event designed to bring internationally renowned authors to the English department and the university.
As part of USC Visions and Voices, the inaugural event, in March, 2019, featured a fiction reading by the acclaimed Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje. The audience of almost 700 attendees was drawn from both the USC community and the greater Los Angeles/Southern California region as well.
The Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation and the USC Department of English have partnered with the intent of uniting a divided country through literature, leading the way for literary bonding and exploration in America through a series of speaking events in the city of Los Angeles.
“The Chowdhury Foundation and USC English Department are bringing the best of the best from around the globe, and Michael Ondaatje is one of the greatest authors of our time,” said best-selling author and foundation leader Subir Chowdhury. “He recently received the Golden Man Booker Prize for his international bestseller, The English Patient, with the UK’s prestigious Booker Prize committee and the public selecting it as the best literary work of the past 50 years.”
(left to right, David St. John; Michael Ondaatje; Subir Chowdhury)