Nafas Reading Series: Raharimanana and Allison Charette, Saturday, April 18, 2026, 7pm
As part of Nafas Reading Series, join us on Saturday, April 18, 2026, at 7 pm, for a reading by Madagascar writer Raharimanana and translator Allison Charette. The reading will be accompanied with musical performance, along with a discussion about the book and conversation moderated by Denver-based translator Chenxin Jiang.
Nafas Reading Series, hosted by Nafas Residency and Counterpath, brings together guests at the residency with local writers and artists for presentations of their work and conversation.
Nafas Residency is a new solitary residency in Denver, CO, offering space to writers, translators, artists, and humanities scholars. Priority is given to marginalized communities and/or projects. The space is pay-as-you-wish and has a simple application process so that it can stay accessible to a wide range of our community. You can find more info about the residency at: https://nafasresidency.org
Raharimanana, born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. His work has garnered many prizes, from the 1990 Prix du Théâtre Inter-africain for one of his earliest plays (translated into English as The Prophet and the President), to the 2023 Prix International Benjamin Fondane for his body of work, awarded annually to a non-French Francophone writer. He also co-founded the publishing house Éditions Project’îles, and has co-directed the Plumes d’Afrique festival of literary and artistic creation since 2004. His first novel to appear in English translation is Return (Seagull Books, 2025), which was awarded the Prix Littéraire Jacques Lacarrière upon its original publication in 2018.
Allison M. Charette is a literary translator who specializes in bringing French-language fiction from Madagascar into English. Before Raharimanana’s Return, she translated Naivo’s Beyond the Rice Fields (Restless Books, 2017) and Johary Ravaloson’s Return to the Enchanted Island (AmazonCrossing, 2019), both to critical acclaim. She has also founded the Emerging Literary Translators’ Network in America (ELTNA.org) and the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program. In 2018, she was awarded an NEA Fellowship in Literary Translation to work on Michèle Rakotoson’s novel, Lalana.