Visiting Author – Ber Anena in conversation with Kasey Peters – The Lies We Tell for America: A Memoir

Then, reality struck: It would cost approximately $150,000 in tuition and fees alone for the two-year degree. Anena scrambles to secure funding, leaving the security of her stable income, apartment, and family in Uganda for great uncertainty in the United States. The idea of studying in New York quickly morphs into an ordeal.

From maneuvering icy roommates to grappling with food insecurity and calling out racism in her writing workshops, Anena begins to rewrite the narrative of the American Dream she had once accepted. Incandescent and uncompromising, funny and humane, The Lies We Tell for America charts the lengths students from “shithole” countries go to seek an education in the West. These pages lay bare Anena’s own cultural assumptions, while shining light on a particular kind of migrant experience.

After everything—was coming to America worth it? About the Speakers: Ber Anena is a writer and poet from Uganda. She attended the MFA Writing program at Columbia University and is finalizing a PhD in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she has received the Vreeland Prize for Fiction and the Susan Atefat Peckham Prize for Poetry.

Anena’s debut poetry collection, A Nation in Labour, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2018. Her works appear in or are forthcoming from Transition Magazine, Wasafiri, Prairie Schooner, The Atlantic, adda, Off Assignment , and Black Warrior Review . Her prose has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and nominated for a Pushcart.

Kasey Peters was born in Nebraska. An Elizabeth George Foundation grantee and the recipient of fellowships from McCormack Writing Center and the Vermont Studio Center, their work has appeared in Sewanee Review, The Rumpus, Greensboro Review, Grist and others. Peters’ first book won the 2026 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and is forthcoming from UGA Press in 2027.