Best. Babel. Ever. It’s as simple as that. Of the twelve authors I have seen over the past two years, besides the more superstar names like Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie—easy fodder to gather excitement on my end to read—Chris Abani is the first to invigorate me enough that I literally want to do nothing [...]

With the recent earthquake in Japan calling to mind last year’s disaster in Haiti, Just Buffalo Literary Center’s newest Babel visitor couldn’t have been more appropriate. Moved to America at the age of twelve, the Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat found herself at the forefront of media coverage last year—a sort of expert on her Caribbean nation [...]

With Ed Cardoni back to open the festivities of the second installment of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s fourth Babel season, one could catch a quick glimpse of Maxine Hong Kingston trying to get on stage. During his tales of art funds and legislature votes and veto prevention, Kingston walked through the door before being asked [...]

The fourth season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel Series begun with a glaring omission—there was no Ed Cardoni at the podium on behalf of Hallwalls, replaced instead by the corporate spiel of ‘local global’ from HSBC’s Charlie Mendola, introduced by Just Buffalo’s Laurie Dean Torrell. I can’t blame the guy, though, since his company [...]

And that is why you leave to get in line for an autograph when Mike Kelleher says “final question” with a guy like Salman Rushdie doing the signing. The guy is a rockstar that not only brought the biggest crowd yet for a Just Buffalo Literary Center Babel event, but also attracted the most ever [...]

Those four words were definitely not what I expected to escape Azar Nafisi’s lips upon reaching the podium at Kleinhans for 2010’s first installment of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel Series. After Mike Kelleher finished his three pages of introductory notes—including naming three of the four authors to be stopping by this great city next [...]

The second installment to Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel series for the 2009-2010 season saw American-Chinese author Ha Jin taking the stage. He is an interesting writer in the fact that he crafts his work with his second language, English. Not even learning it until college, where it was his fifth out of five choices [...]

The 2009-2010 season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel has commenced. Attendance didn’t unfortunately sell-out the new venue at Kleinhans, but the crowd was full and above the capacity of Babeville, so the change definitely was necessary. Michael Kelleher announced that this would be the final series under the original commission from the John R. [...]

The very candid, funny, and intelligent Chilean author Isabel Allende ushered in a new era for the Babel series. Being the inaugural show at the event’s new headquarters of Kleinhans Music Hall, there were even more people in attendance, many additional students, and a lot more parking closer to the venue. It is interesting that [...]