Gini Alhadeff
Gini Alhadeff was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Italian parents. After attending a French kindergarten in Khartoum, Alhadeff learned English in Tokyo, graduated from high school in Florence, Italy, and from art schools in London and New York. She is the author of a memoir, The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family, and of a novel, Diary of a Djinn (Pantheon/Vintage). She founded and edited two literary quarterlies, Normal, and XXIst Century! in the late 80's, and has since contributed regularly to Italian Elle, and to Travel + Leisure magazine; more recently to the quarterlies, Bidoun, and The Drawbridge. In 2004 she won Mexico's Pluma de Plata award for journalism. She has translated 54 poems by Patrizia Cavalli, including La Guardiana, and is at work on a new book. She lives in New York City.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family, Diary of a Djinn
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 12:15AM
An Empty Chair for American Writers
Could we propose, in honor of Pen and this year’s World Voices Festival, an empty chair on CNN and other TV news programs to symbolize the absent voices of American writers when it comes to commenting on politics?
The important question to have emerged Friday night at the 92nd Street Y, after some funny bantering by the Three Musketeers--Rushdie, Eco, and Vargar Llosa was: Why aren’t writers ever asked to comment on politics in America? Why must we listen only to professional commentators (such as the barrage of retired and semi-retired mlitary men we’ve been subjected to)?
“A regrettable thing has happened in America, “ Rushdie said, “the professionalization of the commentariat so voices like those of DeLillo or Robert Stone are not heard.”
The Three lamented the absence of D’Artagnan, the Fourth Musketeer. I propose a candidate for the missing Fourth: the empty chair, placed on stage at every recent PEN event, to symbolize the writers, emprisoned or prevented from traveling, who couldn’t be there, whose “voices we were robbed of.”
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