Pell Center to host lecture with author of New York Times bestselling memoir ‘Solito’

The Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy is partnering with the Rhode Island Center for the Book to host Javier Zamora, the author of the 2024 selection for Reading Across Rhode Island’s all-state read – “Solito” – as part of the Pell Center’s 2024 lecture series. Zamora will be in conversation with Jim Ludes, executive director of the Pell Center, to discuss his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine.

The lecture will be held on Thursday, April 11, in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall in the O’Hare Academic Building at 7 p.m. To register for the lecture, go here. This evening will also include a meet-and-greet reception preceding the lecture, which will include food, drinks and a book signing. The reception will be held on Thursday, April 11, in Ochre Court from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. To purchase tickets for the reception, go here.

Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador, in 1990. When he was only one-year-old, his father fled El Salvador due to the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War. His mother followed in her husband’s footsteps in 1995, just when he was about to turn five-years-old, leaving Zamora in the care of his grandparents – who raised him until he migrated to the U.S. as a nine-year-old boy.

In his New York Times bestselling debut memoir “Solito,” Zamora retells his nine-week odyssey across Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually through the Sonoran Desert. He travelled unaccompanied by boat, bus and foot. After a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Javier made it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants.

Zamora was a 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Stanford University and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize and the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award for his work in the “Undocupoets” campaign.

To register for the lecture on Thursday, April 11, go here. To purchase tickets for the preceding reception, go here.