Categories
Events News

QC MFA Virtual Open House – February 19

Wednesday, February 19 at 5 pm via Zoom

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.

Unraveling the application process can feel like this sometimes!

Now you have two ways to find out whether the Queens College MFA Program is the right choice for you: Our Open House on February 19 at 5 pm.

Our MFA teaching faculty will be on hand to answer questions about the program, so come prepared to ask us anything about how classes are structured to what opportunities MFA students get to publish and work in their field!

Sign up via the Zoom link below, or just click on the image above!

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/8l0EV8teSwWcUvopKBWIdg#/registration

Categories
News

Richard Prins – Best American Essays 2024

We just got some excellent news today: MFA student Richard Prins has been selected for The Best American Essays 2024. Richard, fresh off the heels of winning an NEA Fellowship, had his essay “Because: An Etiology” selected by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and acclaimed New York Times critic Wesley Morris.

The Best American series selects twenty essays out of thousands of nominations from literary journals which represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. Each year an established writer is brought in to act as judge for this prestigious anthology, but is presided over by series editor Kim Dana Kupperman at HarperCollins.

The anthology officially publishes towards the end of October, so you can preorder your copy now. Or, you can read Richard’s inventive essay “Because: An Etiology” in the Potomac Review.

Congratulations, Richard!

Categories
News

zakia henderson-brown wins The 2025 Alice James Award Editor’s Choice

Yesterday, we found out that MFA alum zakia henderson-brown was named as the Editor’s Choice for the 2025 Alice James Award.

Alice James Books is committed to collaborating with literary artists of excellence whose voices have been historically marginalized by producing, promoting, and distributing their work, which often engages the public on important social issues. The Alice James Award builds on Alice James’s reputation for excellence through this annual contest for book manuscripts from both emerging and established poets.

zakia winning a blind submission contest (where no contact information can be listed on the manuscripts submitted) is nothing short of a coup–her forthcoming book, The Body Losing Its Borders, beat out thousands of other manuscripts to be published by one of the premiere independent publishers of poetry in the nation.

The Body Losing Its Borders won’t be available until January 2027, but you can congratulate zakia (and preorder) today!

Categories
News

A Mini QC MFA Reunion!

Take a look at this picture and tell me what you see:

That’s (from left) Katie Machen, Francesca Hyatt, Rebecca Suzuki, Marine Cornuet, Ammiel Alcalay, Radhika Singh, David Iaconangelo, Leo Grossman, Briallen Hopper, who all met up at Ammiel Alcalay and Mosab Abu Toha’s sold-out Poetry Project reading at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, February 12, 2025.

For other programs, having this many alums in a room is a rarity, happening only through universities trying to fleece donations or when someone is trying to start up a new reading series and needs to fill space in their lineup. That’s not us.

So much of what you achieve during an MFA is based on community, whether that’s the notes you get in workshop or the network you lean on when you’re looking for a job or to publish something. Why would you want that to stop after you graduate? What’s great about the Queens College MFA Program is that you become part of it for life. QC folks seek each other out, driven by that same hunger to build and grow as writers. We will show up at your reading! We’ll even buy the book!

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Take a look at some of our other alumni and see if you’d maybe what to become part of the QC MFA Program:

Remember, our application deadline is March 15!

Categories
Events

Alaya Dawn Johnson: Brooklyn Books & Booze

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:

https://randeedawn.com/bonus/brooklyn-books-booze/

Categories
Events

Mosab Abu Toha & Ammiel Alcalay

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.

Categories
Events

ABORTION STORIES, Launch Event & Conversation

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.

Categories
Events

A Nicole Cooley Double Feature – 1/30 & 1/31

Tonight kicks off two nights of Nicole Cooley readings–a double feature, if you will! 

The first is tonight at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Writer’s House, to celebrate the launch of Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems, For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa, a superb anthology celebrating the legacy of Yusef Komunyakaa. You can catch Nicole along with Anne Marie Macari, Jeffrey McDaniel, Yesenia Montilla, John Murillo, and Nicole Sealey tonight at 7 pm if you’re in the city. 

https://as.nyu.edu/departments/cwp/reading-series/spring-2025/poetry-komunyakaa-anthology.html

Tomorrow, you can also hear Nicole read from her latest book, Mother Water Ash, as part of the Brainstorm Reading Series, which is organized by alumni and students from the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation out of the delightful Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn. 

https://www.petescandystore.com/calendar

If you’re in New York City, don’t miss out—hop on the train and go listen to some poetry! 

Categories
Events

“Zuihitsu as Poetry”: Kimiko Hahn & Hiromi Itō

PoetryLiveExchange Vol.1
Date: February 1, 2025
Time: 08:00 p.m. (EST)
$15 via Eventbrite

In Japanese literature, Zuihitsu has long been a form of expressive, reflective writing. In English-speaking contexts, this traditional genre has been received and explored, and evolved into a new form of poetic expression. Kimiko Hahn has been leading this exploration including through her own poetry. On the other hand, Hiromi Ito has built a distinctive literary world through a free-flowing style that seamlessly moves between poetry and prose.

In this event, Kimiko Hahn, drawing from her Japanese-American background, and Hiromi Ito, who has long lived in the United States, will share their perspectives on the fusion of poetry and essay, the influence of cultural backgrounds, and the impact of language. As a special highlight, the poets will perform live readings of their works, creating a unique moment where cultures intersect and merge.

BIOS:

• Hiromi Ito (Poet)

Hiromi Itō is a Japanese poet, born in Tokyo in 1955. She made her debut in 1978 after winning the Gendaishi Techo Award. Exploring themes of gender and the body, she became a leading figure in the 1980s women’s poetry movement and pioneered the genre of “child-rearing essays.” Her unique approach to capturing the lives of women has resonated with a wide audience. From 2018 to 2021, she served as a professor at Waseda University.

Her accolades include the Takami Jun Prize for Kawara Arekusa (2006), the Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize for Toge-Nuki: Shin Sugamo Jizō Engi (2007), the Murasaki Shikibu Prize for Literature (2008), the Naoki Award (2015), the Taneda Santōka Award (2019), the Chikada Award (2020), and the Kumamoto Literary Award for Michiyukiya (2021).

Itō has also worked on modern translations of Buddhist scriptures, publishing Reading the Heart Sutra and Someday I Will Die, Until Then I Will Live: My Own Buddhist Sutra. Other notable works include Hiromi Itō Poetry Collection (Gendaishi Bunko), Continued: Hiromi Itō Poetry Collection (Gendaishi Bunko), Uma-shi, Shoro no Onna, Forest Correspondence: Traveling with Mori Ogai in Berlin, and Tito, the Wild Puppy.

Her poetry has gained international acclaim, particularly the English translation of Toge-Nuki: Shin Sugamo Jizō Engi, titled The Thorn Puller (2022), which has drawn significant attention in the U.S. Other English translations of her work by Jeffrey Angles include Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Itō (2009), Wild Grass on the Riverbank (2014), and Killing Kanoko / Wild Grass on the Riverbank (2020).

• Kimiko Hahn (Poet)

Kimiko Hahn is author of eleven collections of poetry, including The Ghost Forest: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2024) which plays with given forms while creating new ones, and, in doing so, honors past writers. Her last collection, Foreign Bodies, revisits the personal as political while exploring the immigrant body, the endangered animal’s body, objects removed from children’s bodies, and hoarded things. Previous books Toxic Flora and Brain Fever were prompted by fields of science; The Narrow Road to the Interior takes title and forms from Basho’s famous journals. Reflecting her interest in Japanese poetics, her essay on the zuihitsu was published in the American Poetry Review.

In 2023, Kimiko was named a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and received The Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award. Additional honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, American Book Award, and NEA Fellowships. In her service to the field, she enjoys promoting chapbooks and has created a chapbook archive at the Queens College Library. Hahn is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York.

Ticket Information:

$15 via Eventbrite

Categories
Events

Tale of the Wall: Luke Leafgren with Ammiel Alcalay

Tuesday, January 28 · 7pm EST
Free over Zoom or in-person
Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA

Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith for a virtual event with translator Luke Leafgren to discuss and honor the release of The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom by Nasser Abu SrourHe will be in conversation with writer, translator, and Queens College MFA faculty member Ammiel Alcalay.

A passionate prison memoir from a Palestinian man incarcerated for over 30 years in an Israeli prison—equal parts metaphysical love story and cry for justice.

One of more than 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons before October 7, 2023, Nasser Abu Srour was sentenced to life without parole in 1993 after a forced confession. His extraordinary writings delve into the history of the Nakba to the Intifada of the Stones, as he navigates life within the confines of an Israeli prison.

But it is within the walls of his cell that this exceptional memoir takes an unexpected direction—Abu Srour turns the very Wall that has deprived him of freedom into his companion, his interlocutor. It becomes the source of stability that allows him to endure a chaotic, hopeless existence. The limitations of this survival strategy—and singular literary device—become painfully evident when falling in love causes Abu Srour to lose his grip on the Wall.

Only by writing the story of his imprisonment and the story of his love does Abu Srour find his way back. In doing so, he has created a work of art that transcends his pain while shining a glaring light on the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian situation.

Nasser Abu Srour was arrested in 1993, accused of being an accomplice to the murder of an Israeli intelligence officer, and sentenced to life in prison. While incarcerated, Abu Srour completed the final semester of a bachelor’s degree in English from Bethlehem University, and obtained a master’s degree in political science from Al-Quds University. The Tale of a Wall is his first book to appear in English.

Luke Leafgren is an Assistant Dean of Harvard College. He has translated seven novels from Arabic and has twice received the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, in 2018 for Muhsin Al-Ramli’s The President’s Gardens and in 2023 for Najwa Barakat’s Mister N.

Moderator Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar. His over 20 books include After Jews and ArabsMemories of Our Futurea little history, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters, as well as CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books. His co-translation of Palestinian poet Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, is due out in early 2025. He received an American Book Award in for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

What You Need to Know to Attend

This virtual event is free to attend but please consider purchasing The Tale of a Wall. Register on this page to receive a Zoom link on the day of the event. If you don’t receive a confirmation email after registering, contact us right away.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transnational-series-luke-leafgren-with-ammiel-alcalay-tickets-1142665516319?aff=oddtdtcreator

The Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith

The Transnational Series focuses on stories of migration, the intersection of politics and literature, and works in translation and is supported by the independent bookstore Brookline Booksmith. Subscribe to the Transnational Series newsletter for information on upcoming events, book recommendations, and more.

Categories
News

Radhika Singh – “The Spirit of Mutiny”

The Markaz Review has just published an excerpt of a forthcoming novel from MFA alum Radhika Singh in their latest issue. “The Spirit of Mutiny” is part of Singh’s speculative fiction novel which “imagines a post-imperialist future enabled by the success of ongoing liberation movements, with Gaza holding the frontline of resistance to Empire today.”

The Markaz Review is an online and print review of art, music, film, literature, ideas, cities and culture writ large, with an emphasis on freedom of expression and a focus on the writers and artists from the center of the world. Organized as a nonprofit in France and the United States, TMR supports creative people of the greater Middle East, generally thought to include the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa. As a global community, TMR is a creative and literary destination that seeks to erase the boundaries between peoples and celebrate culture.

Congratulations, Ra!