Events
We are delighted MFA Alum and English faculty member Rebecca Suzuki will read from her Loose Translation Award-Winning book When My Mother Was Most Beautiful. If you haven’t yet heard or read her exquisite prose you will want to. If you have, you will more!
We are so excited about our visit from N.K. Jemisin coming up on March 27. It’s not too often you have a three-time winner of the Hugo Award right in front of you, and even more impressive is that she’s the first author to win the award three consecutive years in a row (for her Broken Earth trilogy).
And the good news is you have two ways to attend, by RSVP for in-person, and over Zoom, so you don’t have to miss out on this fantastic reading!
RSVP: https://forms.gle/yEuoMxGxWoixUXgY6
Link to join: http://tinyurl.com/vvrnvj8z
Brainstorm has got a great series of events lined up for the spring. Check it out!
Thursday, March 7, Reception: 6:15 PM
Event: 7–8:30 PM
Q-Side Lounge, Dining Hall Room 122
RSVP (FREE): https://bit.ly/viviangornick
Join via Zoom: http://tinyurl.com/3hbvbvzs
Please join us for a reading by the legendary Vivian Gornick. Memoirist, critic, and CUNY graduate, Gornick is a pioneer of creative nonfiction, writing with unwavering willingness to share from her experiences to explore larger social issues.
Gornick will read from her extensive body of work, then join in a question and answer session moderated by MFA alum Catherine LaSota. This is surely an event not to be missed, so if you can’t make it to our beautiful Queens College campus, be sure to login over Zoom so you don’t miss a thing!
RSVP to come jn person (FREE): https://bit.ly/viviangornick
Join via Zoom: http://tinyurl.com/3hbvbvzs
BIOS:
For Vivian Gornick, self-narrative is a form of cultural criticism: The personal is decidedly political. Born in the Bronx, she grew up in a family of working-class immigrants with parents who were committed Communists. Since the 1960s, she has been a writer of journalism, essays, and memoirs. Much of her writing explores the actual and metaphoric significance of being an outsider—perpetually “half in, half out.” Despite her claim that feminism ended her attachment to Judaism, the experience of being “twice an outsider” (Jewish and female) serves for her as a powerful lesson in marginality. In works on feminist radicals Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Emma Goldman, she has expanded the autobiographical form to include the biographical, offering an ideological and genealogical starting point for Gornick’s own involvement in second wave feminism. She is currently at work on a book about CUNY’s City College of New York.
Catherine LaSota (MFA in Creative Nonfiction ‘24, Queens College) is the Associate Director of Social Practice CUNY. She is the founder of the Resort writing community and host of the Cabana Chats podcast on writing and community. From 2015–2020, Catherine hosted the acclaimed LIC Reading Series, and she is the former executive director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University. Her writing appears in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Vice, The Brooklyn Rail, Catapult, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and two young children in Queens.
Our first event of the semester is a collaboration with Off the Page. Ava Chin will read from her memoir Mott Street, followed by conversation with QC President Frank Wu. She’ll be signing books too.
Take a look at our terrific lineup of spring events. (Register for the March 7 event with Vivian Gornick here.)
And, a reading by N.K. Jemisin (the first author to win three consecutive
Best Novel Hugo Awards) has been added to the lineup on March 27, at 7PM in the Godwin-Ternbach Museum!
Just another reason to come visit us at QC MFA!
Our own Nicole Cooley will be taking part in this amazing panel, “Resurrection Not Erasure: When Poets Talk Back to History,” at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference (more popularly known as AWP) this year in Kansas City.
“Poets whose work complicates or writes against dominant narratives will discuss how the persona poem challenges historical erasure and revises both the past and present. Panelists will discuss the ethical implications of the personal poem, their decisions to use persona in their work, and their underlying methodologies and research in voicing the past.”
Nicole will be talking alongside poets Alyse Bensel, Shane McCrae, Blas Falconer, and Cherene Sherrard. For those of you who are going to AWP, definitely go check that out! And if you’re not going to AWP, you can always contact us to ask Nicole about it!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 7:00PM
Poetry Society of America
119 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Tickets $10/ Free for Members
REGISTER
The Poetry Society of America is kicking off the new year right, with a reading from Natalie Diaz & Ishion Hutchinson on January 18th. It’s a great chance to check out PSA’s new headquarters in Brooklyn (if you haven’t already) and hear two stellar poets!
Please join us virtually for a Graduate Information Session to explore the MFA in Creative Writing program at Queens College.
Located in the most culturally and linguistically diverse county in the nation, the Queens College MFA in Creative Writing program attracts students dedicated to crossing boundaries in genre, craft, and language. Classes are small, mostly in the evening, and students work closely with faculty mentors. Gain creative experience with affordable public university tuition in an urban environment with a verdant 80-acre campus.
The program offers tracks in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and literary translation–and students are encouraged to experiment with multiple genres. Queens College hosts a lively events series and has partnerships with the Louis Armstrong House Museum, The Poetry Society of America, Ghostbird Press, and Pete’s Candy Store. Teaching opportunities, internships, and scholarships are available. See how far you can take your writing.
Monday, January 29, 2024, 5:00 pm
Saturday, December 2nd at 5PM
The World’s Borough Bookshop
3406 73rd Street, Queens, NY 11372
MFA alum Rebecca Suzuki’s award-winning chapbook, When My Mother Is Most Beautiful, officially hits shelves on December 1st, and is debuting with style the next day at The World’s Bookshop in Jackson Heights, whose mission is to uplift BIPOC voices. Rebecca will be joined by multilingual Queens poet and fellow alum Hannah Lee, for an evening that is sure to be as beautiful as this book is!
When My Mother Is Most Beautiful is at once a powerful love letter to a mother and to language itself, delving into complex questions of family, communication, culture, and connection. These poems chronicle the difficult art of navigating multiple cultural identities, examining how languages twist and morph across cultures through the imperfect act of translation, how they bind people together and keep them apart, and even how they could be reimagined to make a better world.
You can pick up this book at the book party, of course, or order a copy today from Small Press Distribution!
