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!

Sunday, December 3rd at 2PM
The Bryant Library
2 Papermill Road, Roslyn, NY
Register here

MFA alum Tejas Desai will be discussing his literary career, including his two series, the novel trilogy The Brotherhood Chronicle and the literary series The Human Tragedy, plus the literary/arts movement The New Wei and its related projects.

Join us for an end-of-semester celebration on Wednesday December 6 in Klapper 710! We’ll kick things off with a Brainstorm reading at 5pm, followed by general merriment and a book exchange. 

Bring writing, snacks, or books to share, or just yourself!
Reading starts at 5 but we’ve reserved the room for the whole evening. Come when you can, leave when you must!

Come along to celebrate the launch of The Queens Review. Contact Julie Goodale if you’d like to read.

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. 

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. 

For more info or to make an appointment to view the BlackMass collection, please contact [email protected]. 

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 

https://www.theresortlic.com/bkbf-2023