On May 9, join us for an exceptional evening with writer Jakuta Alikavazovic as she discusses her latest book, Like A Sky Inside (trans. by Daniel Levin Becker, Fern Books), with Los Angeles Times Book Award winning author Ben Lerner.

In March 2020, Jakuta Alikavazovic spends a night in the Louvre Museum. At home: her nine-month-old son. In her overnight bag: a notebook, a toiletry kit, a duvet, a cube of nougat, and something that shouldn’t be there. In her head: memories of the Venus de Milo, of land art and the American road, of romance, travel, immigration,  war – and of her father, who after each of their many visits to the Louvre would ask just how she’d go about stealing the Mona Lisa.

Like A Sky Inside is an insightful and heartfelt meditation on the possibilities and impossibilities of art, on parenthood, the betrayals experienced in youth, on foreignness and belonging, and on the secret conversations between our souls and the places that linger in our dreams.

In English. Free with RSVP.  Click here for tickets.

The event is co-organized with Villa Albertine and is a part of the Authors on Tour program. Jakuta Alikavazovic’s 2024 US tour is made possible by Villa Albertine and Fern Books.

JAKUTA ALIKAVAZOVIC was born in Paris to a family of Bosnian and Montenegrin origins. Her parents settled in France in the early 1970s and Jakuta Alikavazovic was brought up bilingual, with close ties to her Bosnian and Montenegrin relatives. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Goncourt Prize for a first novel and more recently, the Médicis Prize for non-fiction with her latest work Like A Sky Inside (trans. by Daniel Levin Becker, Fern Books, 2024). She is also a columnist for the French newspaper Libération and a French translator for authors, including Toni Morrison and David Forster Wallace.

BEN LERNER is the author of eight books of poetry and prose as well as several collaborations with visual artists. His new book of poetry, The Lights, was recently published by FSG, and his latest novel, The Topeka School, won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, among other honors, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

Photos credits: © Francesca Mantovani / © Beowulf Sheehan