Located in the most culturally and linguistically diverse county in the nation, the Queens College MFA 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. Join an exciting creative community with affordable public university tuition in an urban environment with a verdant 80-acre campus. To find out more, please join the virtual open house on Wednesday, November 15, from 5 – 6:30 PM EST. Zoom link HERE.
November 6, 2023 5-6:30PM Rosenthal Library, Tanenbaum Room 300i Event Link Light refreshments will be served.
On Black Solidarity Day, meet BlackMass Publishing and celebrate the Library’s acquisition of the BlackMass Collection.
BlackMass Publishing is an independent press promoting and publishing material by Black Artists founded by Yusuf Hassan in 2019. Combining archival photographs and found print material with poetry and jazz music, BlackMass grapples with the blurred lines and idiosyncrasies which make up the collective improvisation of African diasporic culture.
Schedule
5:00-5:30pm: Open House / Browse the Collection
5:30-6:30pm: Talk and Q/A with Yusuf Hassan and Kwamé Sorrell of BlackMass Publishing
Queens College Special Collections and Archives recently acquired a curated box of over 60 zines from BlackMass Publishing that explore politics, jazz, religion, architecture and other themes.
Instagram, @blackmasspublishing
Sponsored by: Queens College Library Special Collections and Archives, the Queens College MFA Program, and Queens College Africana Studies, with the generous support of the Pine Tree Foundation of New York.
You are invited to CREATIVE NONFICTION NOW, sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation–October 18, 2023. The event will include reading and conversation with Bridgett Davis, Carina del Valle Schorske, and Cutter Wood, moderated by alum and colleague Francesca Hyatt. Zoom registration here.
Think growing up in Detroit 1970s Detroit with a mother who was a numbers runner; Puerto Rican backup dancers, graffiti artists, indigenous cave painters, state-funded photographers, tenement dwellers, and out-of-print poets; and investigative reporting on the vicissitudes of human waste (including a vomit cult).
These are great writers. They’ll discuss their publication experience, what “Creative Nonfiction” means—if it means anything—as well as the first-hand research they do for their projects—spending time in places, interviewing strangers, friends, and family. There will be plenty of time for spontaneous discussion.
If you’re on campus, you should come talk about building a life as a writer and editor with Irene Vázquez! 12:15pm to 1:30pm in Klapper 708. (Snacks will be provided!)
BIO:
Born in New Orleans, raised in Houston, now living in Manhattan, Irene Vázquez is a queer Black Mexican American poet, editor, translator, and journalist. Their writing sits at the intersection of Black cultural work, placemaking and the environment. Irene’s debut chapbook Take Me To the Water was released by Bloof Books in October 2022. They are a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, whose work can be found in Muzzle, the Oxford American, and the Brooklyn Rail, among others. By day, Irene works at Levine Querido, editing books about feisty twelve-year-olds.
Queens Review and our own Brainstorm reading series are co-hosting a special reading by the poet Stevie Edwards on campus. This hybrid event will feature Edwards reading from their work and answering questions, all from the comfort of Klapper 710, or the convenience of your Zoom screen!
Wednesday, October 11th 5-7PM Klapper Hall 710 Queens College, CUNY 65-30 Kissena Blvd. Flushing, NY 11367
Zoom link to come, but we hope to see you there!
BIO:
Stevie Edwards holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of North Texas and an MFA in poetry from Cornell University. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of poetry collections Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press / Curbstone, 2023), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012), as well as the chapbook Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018). Edwards is currently the Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review and a Lecturer at Clemson University. In recent years, she has been a recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a VSC Fellowship from Vermont Studio Centers. Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her husband and a small herd of rescue pitbulls (Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Peaches).
MFA alum Catherine LaSota is taking part in the Brooklyn Book Festival’s fantastic lineup of events with this doozy:
What’s Community Got to Do with It? (In Person)
Join The Resort writing community as we revisit the old stomping grounds of the LIC Reading Series (2015-’20). Denne Michele Norris (writer & editor-in-chief, Electric Literature), Greg Mania (Born to Be Public), and Matt Ortile (The Groom Will Keep His Name) will be in conversation with Resort & LIC Reading Series founder Catherine LaSota about the ways we have developed community online and in person. What makes a supportive community? How does community play a role in our writing lives? Audience participation is encouraged but not required. Ask questions of our panel and win raffle prizes!
LIC Bar carriage house, 45-58 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY 11101 – wheelchair accessible
On the final day of Sung Tieu’s Infra-Specter, writer Eugene Lim is joined by Anelise Chen, Danny Tunick, Donald Breckenridge, and Lisa Chen in an in-gallery performative reading of Choir, a text that brings together ten ranting, delusional, and hallucinatory voices that arise from the exhibition’s underbelly.
This live reading primarily engages Sung’s new commission, Liability Infrastructure (2023) in Gallery 932 Grand, and is directed by Eugene Lim.
Choir, Live is co-organized by Amant and Wendy’s Subway and is part of Amant’s Ear to the Ground program series.
About Choir
Choir is a newly commissioned text that marks the launch of Long Take, a new tri-annual series of creative writing co-published by Wendy’s Subway and Amant, taking its initial prompts from Amant’s exhibition and public events program.
About the readers
Anelise Chen was born in Taipei and moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1990. She earned her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and her M.F.A. from NYU. She is now Director of Undergraduate Studies in Creative Writing at Columbia University, where she teaches fiction. Chen is the author of So Many Olympic Exertions (Kaya Press), a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 Awardee. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications such as The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Believer Magazine, BOMB, and Conjunctions. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Blue Mountain Center, Banff Centre, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. Her next book, Clam Down (One World Random House), based on her mollusk column for the Paris Review, will be published in 2025. She lives in New Haven with her family.
Danny Tunick performs and conducts music ranging from Pierre Boulez to hardcore punk. His performances in the rock, jazz, and experimental and classical music genres have been recorded and released on over forty record labels. He is currently most often seen performing in a dress with the band Sugarlife. Mr. Tunick would like to express his gratitude to Eugene Lim for the innumerable opportunities which Mr. Lim has granted him in this life.
Donald Breckenridge has written five novels including And Then (Black Sparrow Press 2017) and As It Falls (Ellipsis Press 2023), he has edited two fiction anthologies, and introduced the NYRB Classics edition of Henri Duchemin and His Shadows by Emmanuel Bove. He was the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail for nineteen years, and co-founded and co-edited InTranslation. He is currently working on a new novel.
Eugene Lim is the author of Choir and of the novels Fog & Car, The Strangers, Dear Cyborgs, and Search History. He works as a school librarian, runs Ellipsis Press, and lives in Queens, New York.
Lisa Hsiao Chen is the author of Mouth (Kaya Press) and Activities of Daily Living (W.W. Norton), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and Gotham Book Prize and selected by TheNew Yorker, Vogue, and Publishers Weekly as a Best Book of 2022. She is the co-founder with Eugene Lim of the Tehching Hsieh Free Thinking Group. Born in Taipei, she now lives in Brooklyn.
Friday, September 22nd Pete’s Candy Store 709 Lorimer Street Brooklyn, NY
BRAINSTORM is a reading series organized by grad students from the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation. With special guests John Weir, Briallen Hopper, and recent recipients of the Louis Armstrong House Museum & Archives Residency Program.
Hear writers you know, meet writers you might like to know, and perhaps be introduced to your future favorite author.
The MFA Program is so proud to welcome this year’s visiting professor, novelist Eugene Lim, with a reading from his own work. Following will be a conversation with MFA alum Kaz Uy, and a reception in the lobby of the Music Building.
This event will be both in person and broadcast over Zoom, so I hope you will join us!
DATE: Oct 3 Choral Room, Music Building Reception to Follow
Eugene Lim is a Visiting Associate Professor in English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College. He is the author of four novels: Fog & Car (2008), The Strangers (2013), Dear Cyborgs (2017), Search History (2021) and the chapbook The Basement Food Court of Forking Paths (2020). His writings have appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, The Believer, Granta, and Fence. Honors include a book award from the Association of Asian American Studies and Big Other’s 2021 Award for Fiction. He runs Ellipsis Press, known for publishing innovative fiction.
Kaz Uy is a trans writer who spent his childhood in the Philippines and earned an MFA in creative writing from Queens College. His writing shows his love for finality, horror, and the magic in the mundane. He can be found on Instagram: @cryptypical.
We’re getting ready for a brand new semester with not just classes but a whole lineup of events for your literary pleasure!
Come out to Queens and learn more about publishing, creative nonfiction, black solidarity, and more!
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