Author Harriet Millan will discuss her novel How Fast Can You Run, which is based on the inspiring true story of Michael Majok Kuch, a South Sudanese refugee who fled his burning village at the age of five and was eventually granted political asylum in the United States. Michael, who will also be appearing, will talk about his life and the book project. Michael and Harriet became friends when One Book One Philadelphia asked her to select ten of her Drexel University creative writing students to interview ten Sudanese immigrants to be serialized in Philadelphia’s City Paper. Together they created a fund that reunited several Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan with their mothers.

Harriet Levin Millan is a prize winning poet and writer. She received an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and teaches creative writing and directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing at Drexel University. Eavan Boland chose her first book of poetry, The Christmas Show, for the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. It also won the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. Her second book of poetry, Girl in Cap and Gown, was a PEW Fellowship in the Arts Discipline Winner and National Poetry Series finalist. CavanKerry will release a third book of poetry, Her Oceanography, in 2018.

Michael Majok Kuch returned to his homeland of South Sudan in 2010 after attending high school, college and graduate school in Philadelphia. During his college years he worked as an East African expert for the NGO Global Education Motivators, speaking at the United Nations on human rights, where he shared the stage with Olara Otunnu and Elie Wiesel. He currently works for the government of the Republic of South Sudan, where he is an advisor in Research and Policy in the Office of the President.