UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance Will Present Marlon James

UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) presents Marlon James on Thursday, February 27, 2020, at 8 p.m. at Glorya Kaufman Hall. Tickets starting at $28 are available now at cap.ucla.edu, 310-825-2101 and the Royce Hall box office.

James will discuss his latest work, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, a surreal fantasy epic that he, as a joke, described as "an African Game of Thrones," then The New Yorker agreed. The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani calls it "the literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe-filled with dizzying, magpie references to old movies and recent TV, ancient myths and classic comic books, and fused into something new and startling by his gifts for language and sheer inventiveness."

James is a storyteller telling stories about stories. His research for Black Leopard, Red Wolf is from ancient African folklore. Some have considered James to be making a contemporary statement with the number of queer characters. He confirmed, however, in a Vice interview that queerness has been in African folklore for centuries.

A winner of the Man Booker prize in 2015 for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, James was born in Jamaica and a good writing day for him is when he doesn't see something coming. In addition to working on the second installment of the Black Leopard, Red Wolf trilogy, James works as a Professor of Literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Marlon James concludes CAP UCLA's Words & Ideas series this season. For more performances, please visit cap.ucla.edu/calendar.

CAP UCLA presents

Marlon James

Thursday, February 27 at 8 p.m.

Glorya Kaufman Hall, UCLA

849 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90089

Related Activity:

Visit their Pop-Up Library and Reading Room, which will feature some of the writers who inspire and influence Marlon James, and learn about other contemporary writers who are transforming fantasy and sci-fi literature.

Tickets:

Tickets starting at $28

Online: cap.ucla.edu

Phone: 310-825-2101

UCLA Central Ticket Office: 310-825-2101, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Royce Hall box office: open 90 minutes prior to the event start time.

Artists website: Marlon James

About Marlon James

Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for A Brief History of Seven Killings, making him the first Jamaican author to take home the U.K.'s most prestigious literary award. In the book, James combines masterful storytelling with brilliant skill at characterization and an eye for detail to forge a bold novel of dazzling ambition and scope. He explores Jamaican history through the perspectives of multiple narrators and genres. The political thriller, the oral biography and the classic whodunit confront the untold history of Jamaica in the 1970s, with excursions to the assassination attempt on reggae musician Bob Marley, as well as the country's own clandestine battles during the Cold War. He graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in Language and Literature, and from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania in 2006 with a Masters in creative writing. In 2018 Marlon James received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. In April 2019 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2019 in the Pioneers category.

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