The Clemson University Department of English celebrated the 19th Annual Literary Festival with a headliner reading from acclaimed author Laila Lalami on March 26.
Close to 200 book lovers packed the Watt Center Auditorium on March 26 to hear from best-selling author Laila Lalami discuss her award-winning novel, The Moor’s Account.
Lalami’s reading was the headliner event for the Clemson Literary Festival, now in its 19th year.
“We were honored to have Laila attend this year’s festival,” said John Pursley, a principal lecturer of English who organized the festival. “As this year’s Pathways Common Read author, having Laila here in person was a great way for students and faculty to really punctuate the Spring semester.”
The Moor’s Account was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and winner of the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Adventure, transformation and reinvention
The Moor’s Account tells the fictionalized story of “Estebanico,” an enslaved Moroccan man (Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori) who accompanied a Spanish conquistador named Cabeza de Vaca on the Narvaez expedition to Florida in 1527.
Although Estebanico is mentioned only briefly in the historical record, he is the first recorded African person to explore the New World.
“I built a fiction around a nugget of historical information,” Lalami told the audience as she explained her writing process after reading an opening scene from the novel. She recounted how she gathered as much information as she could about the characters and time period, visiting Estebanico’s hometown of Azemmour in Morocco, and reading the journals and travelogues of his contemporaries.
While the records provided valuable glimpses into both major events and daily life in the 16th century, she stressed that she still had to fill in many gaps with creativity.
“Writing a book is an exercise in making a thousand decisions,” she said. The final result was a book she described as a story of adventure, transformation and reinvention as the characters work together to survive far from the laws and social structures of Spain.
“And because it is a story of reinvention, it strikes me as a very American story,” Lalami concluded.
Her talk was followed by an insightful Q&A with the audience and a book signing.
“The opportunity for our students to meet and learn from an author of Laila Lalami’s caliber is tremendous,” said Nicholas Vazsonyi, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities. “Her visit, on the heels of our Fall event with reigning Pulitzer Prize-winner Percival Everett, speaks to the importance of literature and writing at Clemson, and in general is a testament to our ongoing efforts to elevate the intellectual climate outside the classroom.”
The 19th Annual Literary Festival was made possible thanks to the sponsorship of the College of Arts and Humanities, the Department of English, Clemson Libraries, the Humanities Hub, the Pathways in Humanities and Social Sciences initiative, the Pearce Center for Professional Communication and the South Carolina Review.
