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Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint is the author of the lyric novel The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, A Haven, which Jenny Boully called “an amazingly beautiful changeling of a book,” and which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. She also wrote the forthcoming family history project Zat Lun, which won the 2018 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly and Kenyon Review Online, among other journals, and has been translated into Burmese and Lithuanian. She is the new visiting writer at Amherst College.
Refreshments and childcare will be provided.
Karin Meyers, visiting assistant professor at Smith College, will examine how and why Western Buddhists are participating in Extinction Rebellion—a global movement against the social, economic and political structures causing the rapid deterioration of our climate and ecosystems. The talk will discuss current Buddhist responses to the climate emergency in the context of the 20th-century movement of "socially engaged Buddhism" initiated by Asian Buddhist teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh. This event is sponsored by the Department of Religion and Religious and Spiritual Life.