Events
Brooklyn Book Festival
11:00 am EST
September 21, 2025
Main Stage on Borough Hall Plaza
Columbus Park Brooklyn NY 11201 United States
Poets Kwame Dawes (Sturge Town), Kimiko Hahn (The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems), and Patricia Smith (The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems) will read poems that explore narrative, personal history, and beauty. Introduced by poet Tina Chang (Hybrida).
Monday, October 6, 2025 • Klapper Hall 672
Writers at Queens, our campus-wide event series, is proud to bring comics artist Kelly Fernandez to campus for a day of workshops on Monday, October 6.
Fernandez will be talking about her award-winning graphic novel, MANU, and teaching several hands-on workshops for both undergrads and graduates of the QC community:
12:15 pm (Free Hour)
Cartooning after College:
A Comics Workshop
6:30 pm
Life Cycle of a Graphic Novel:
A Comics Workshop
Hope to see you there!
BIO:
Kelly Fernández is a Dominican American cartoonist from Queens, New York. Her debut graphic novel, MANU, was published by Scholastic Graphix in November 2021. Since its publication, MANU received four-starred reviews, was recognized as one of the Washington Post’s Best Children’s Book of the Year, was the Silver Medal Winner at the 2022 International Latino Book Awards, and was recently included in Kirkus’s “Best Books for the 21st Century (So Far)” list. Fernández is employed as a children’s librarian by day and works on her second graphic novel by night.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
LIGHT REFRESHMENTS AND BOOKS FOR SALE
For more information, contact series director Nicole Cooley at [email protected] or visit qcenglish.commons.gc.cuny.edu/writers.
Co-sponsored by the Department of English, Department of Art, MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS), Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities, School of Arts, and Office of the Provost in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.
| Join us to celebrate the book launch of Ammiel Alcalay‘s CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books with a reading by Ammiel Alcalay, music by Safira Berrada-Riggs on ‘oud and vocals, and an introduction and conversation with Zhora Saed. |
| Fri, Sep 19th, 6:00 PM. Martin E. Segal Theatre, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC. Free and open to all. Registration required. |
| Join Lost & Found and Litmus Press for an evening of readings, music, and conversation to celebrate and launch poet, translator, critic, and scholarAmmiel Alcalay‘s highly-anticipated, monumental new book CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books (Litmus Press, 2025). Alcalay will be introduced by Zohra Saed, followed by a musical introduction by Safira Berrada-Riggs on ‘oud and vocals. CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books combines three of Ammiel Alcalay’s previously published poetic texts—Scrapmetal (2007), the cairo notebooks (1993), and from the warring factions (2002)—with a new work, “Controlled Demolition.” Unlike most writing categorized as “documentary” poetry, here the author and his process are constant reference points, serving as a prism to refract changes over time and circumstance in what becomes a mix of memoir, poetry, auto-critique, prose narrative, history, and investigative journalism by other means. Books will be available at the reading, which will be followed by a reception. Register to attend here. |
| About the Author |
| Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s latest books are CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books, his co-translation of Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. In 2017, he received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative; he is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. |
Thursday, May 29
QC Art Center Gallery
Rosenthal Library, 6th floor
Approximately 1pm
Come say goodbye with us to the class of 2025!
These readings are always a little bittersweet: we are thrilled to celebrate how far our students have come, the hard work they’ve been able to put into their writing, and the bright futures they are going to have, but it also means not seeing them around campus anymore.
Fortunately, we decided to host a grand reading to distract you all while we cry a little bit–join us in the QC Art Center Gallery, on the 6th floor of the Rosenthal Library, on the afternoon of Commencement, May 29th.
Starting about half an hour after the English Department’s ceremony in Goldstein Theatre, we’ll walk over to the library for a late lunch and readings by our four graduating students:
These newly-crowned MFAs are going to read from their theses, and their thesis advisors are going to say a few kind words about them.
Everyone is welcome to attend–you can come cry with us (in a good way)!
This Sunday is the launch of issue 2 of The Queens Review!
Join TQR at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn on May 25th at 7pm for readings by:
The Queens Review is a journal based in Queens: a borough with a multiplicity of cultures, languages, and experiences. Rather than present a single unified voice, we aim to express the varied landscapes around us as well as our own internal terrain. Founded by students and faculty of the Queens College MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, The Queens Review is interested in work that pushes boundaries –– on an emotional level as well as a linguistic one –– poems, stories, translations, and fragments that scatter, ground, croon, and devastate.
Our team at Brainstorm had a brainstorm of its own: invite small presses to take center stage.
Independent publishing is where real literary work comes out to play. Writing can truly be experimental, or groundbreaking, or daring if it doesn’t have to fit into the existing catalogue of a Big 5 publishing house. Indies get to stand up for the work they believe in. No wonder many writers get their start in small presses!
Brainstorm, a reading series organized by grad students from the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation, is starting off their commitment to integrate small presses into the reading series by inviting Ghostbird Press to the stage.
On Friday, May 30th, you can catch Ghostbird authors Richard Prins (the most recent winner of the Birdhouse Prize), John Reid Currie, along with a special appearance by Ghostbird Founder, Peter Vanderberg.
Will they regale you with their ghostly birdsong? Will they talk about the ins and outs of independent publishing? Most importantly, will you be there to add your voice?
We hope to see you at Pete’s Candy Store!
Monday, May 5, 2025 • 7 pm
Rosenthal Library, Tanenbaum Room, 300i
Live and in-person!
Join us for our last Writers at Queens event of the semester, as we celebrate Richard Prins on his winning the Birdhouse Prize from Ghostbird Press.
You may remember that over the past year Richard has also been included in The Best American Essays 2024 and won an NEA Fellowship, so we’re overjoyed to celebrate this great year with Richard!
Richard will read from his prize winning chapbook of poems, We May Eat Fruit, before he sits down with Ghostbird publisher, Peter Vanderberg, and Professor Roger Sedarat for a rousing discussion on going from manuscript to publication.
Ghostbird Press is a small, independent chapbook press that publishes collaborations of writing and visual art. Peter Vanderberg, also a QC MFA alum, offers the annual Birdhouse Prize to graduating QC MFA students, resulting in a gorgeous full-color chapbook for the winner, which just goes to show you the power of the QC MFA community!
We hope to see you there!
February 18 at 7 pm
Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room
86 34th Street, Brooklyn, NY
MFA faculty member Alaya Dawn Johnson will be taking part in one of the city’s most fun reading series, Brooklyn Books & Booze. The series takes place in the tasting room of Barrow’s Intense ginger liqueur distillery on the third Tuesday of each month.
For more information, and to see the full lineup for February 18th, please visit the Brooklyn Books & Booze website:
Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 8:00 pm
The Parish Hall at St Mark’s Church
Tickets: $10/Free on YouTube
QC MFA faculty member Ammiel Alcalay will be appearing at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project this March!
Mosab Abu Toha and Ammiel Alcalay‘s poetry bring new meaning to the act of witnessing, writing with and for the dead, summoning the living in a call to imagine anew—form an image of another world lying below the rubble of this world’s unending devastation.
Since 1966, The Poetry Project has expanded access to literature, education, and opportunities for sharing one’s creative work in a counter-hierarchical, radically open space and community. Premised on the vision that cultural action at the local level can inspire broader shifts in public consciousness, The Project is committed to developing and collaborating on replicable program models that challenge persistent social narratives, especially through the verbal reframing made possible in poetry.
This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project’s YouTube channel.
Tue, Mar 4, 2025
6:00 PM–8:00 PM
The Skylight Room (9100)
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC.
Free and open to all. Registration required.
Penguin Classics presents ABORTION STORIES, a one-of-a-kind, intersectional volume of abortion representation in American literature before Roe v. Wade that compellingly proclaims: when abortion is illegal, people’s lives are always more precarious and limited.
Head to the CUNY Grad Center for a conversation with Karen Weingarten (Editor), Rebecca Traister (Foreword), and Renee Bracy Sherman (Afterword) who will discuss these stories, poems, essays, and memoirs that reflect a range of representations and responses to abortion. The conversation will be moderated by Professor Vanessa Pérez-Rosario (Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center).
This event is free and open to all, please register to attend. Copies of the book will be available at the event.
