Professor Kimiko Hahn joined First Lady Jill Biden and Kishida Yuko, wife of Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, in a cultural program as part of an official visit to Washington, just last week.
Fresh off the heels of winning the Ruth Lilly lifetime achievement award from the Poetry Foundation, Kimiko led writing exercises with a group of local high school students, which drew from her heritage and celebrated Japanese culture. The First Lady, who is herself a former teacher of writing, of course knew that Kimiko Hahn would be a great choice to lead this workshop in honor of the Japanese ambassador’s visit.
If you want to see some of this special event, you can watch the video from The White House YouTube page:
Let’s face it, people want to go to MFA programs to work with particular writers: people whose work they admire, writers who can show them the right way to approach their own work. That’s why it’s so perfect that our own Briallen Hopper (author of the creative essay collection Hard to Love) has been interviewed for Famous Writing Routines, a magazine dedicated to exploring the daily habits, writing process, and work routines of some of the most renowned authors throughout history.
Check out that interview to get all of Briallen’s insights on the writing process:
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.
MFA alum Todd Sullivan has a big write-up in The Korea Times, for the 10th anniversary of his literary journal, Samjoko Magazine.
Todd moved to Korea to teach English language courses and has thrived. Todd is the author of five novels, most recently Blood Stew and The Gray Man of Smoke and Shadows, as well as dozens of short stories, poems, essays, and novelettes. He was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize last year for his short story “One Hour,” in the journal After Dinner Conversations.
Congratulations on all your hard work, Todd! Go read Todd’s profile in The Korea Times:
MFA student Julie Hornberger has won a 2024 National Organization of Italian American Women (NOIAW) Scholarship. Each year, NOIAW proudly awards 4-6 scholarships to deserving Italian American Women, enabling them to chase their dreams of higher education. Julie Hornberger was selected from among the many applicants because of her studies here at the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation.
MFA alum Rajiv Mohabir has three poems in this Spring 2024 issue of Sixth Finch, out just today!
Sixth Finch, is a quarterly journal of poetry and art, operating continuously since 2008. You should read Rajiv’s poems right now, then think about submitting your poems for the next issue!
Next year’s Visiting Professor Alaya Dawn Johnson has just been awarded the Best Fiction for Younger Readers Award by the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) for her YA novel The Library of Broken Worlds (HarperCollins).
The BSFA has a rich tradition of recognizing groundbreaking figures in the field of science fiction, so it is an honor for Johnson to be recognized. And it is just this level of skill and expertise that Johnson will bring to our MFA students starting this fall!
Tuesday, April 30 at 7PM Pete’s Candy Store 709 Lorimer St. Brooklyn, NY
Grab your thinking caps because the next Brainstorm is coming your way, featuring poet Roger Sedarat (Haji As Puppet: An Orientalist Burlesque) and musician Leah Coloff (The Secret City).
Brainstorm is a reading series organized by grad students from the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation. Come hear writers you know, meet writers you might like to know, and perhaps be introduced to your future favorite author.
Tuesday, April 16, 7PM (Reception at 6:30PM) QC Art Center, Rosenthal Library 612 Moderated by Peter Vanderberg In-person, or via Zoom: http://tinyurl.com/2efezp7x
Join us as we celebrate the latest winner of the Birdhouse Prize from Ghostbird Press, Hannah Lee! She’ll be reading from her award-winning chapbook, On the Other Side of the Magpie, along with past winners Joe Gross and Francesca Hyatt.
Ghostbird Press is a small, independent chapbook press that publishes collaborations of writing and visual art. Peter Vanderberg, a fellow QC MFA alum, offers the annual Birdhouse Prize to graduating QC MFA students, resulting in a gorgeous full-color chapbook for the winner.
If you can’t make it to campus for this wonderful event for the QC community, we hope you can join us over Zoom via the link below. Join via Zoom:
Hannah Lee is a NYC-based Korean-American poet who processes her world through poetry. She is a graduate of the Queens College MFA program, and was an editor at Armstrong Literary. Her work has been featured in Encounters Magazine.
Francesca Hyatt is a writer, translator, and lecturer of English at CUNY-Queens College. She has MFA in Creative Nonfiction and her chapbook Forestwish won the Birdhouse Prize in 2022 (Ghostbird Press). She is the editor at KtB Magazine, a founding co-editor at the new literary journal Clotheslines, and the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Eating Alone. www.francescahyatt.com.
Joe Gross is a Flushing-based bookseller, poet, translator, and author the prize-winning chapbook Lest We All Get Clipped (Ghostbird Press, His work has been anthologized in Eating Alone: Essays & Reflections (Clotheslines Press). His work has been anthologized in Eating Alone: Essays & Reflections (Clotheslines Press 2023) and The Pearl (Wyeth Renwick 2023). He holds an MFA from Queens College, where he was co-editor of Armstrong Literary. Twitter: @komradekapybara Instagram: @joegrosspoet
Peter Vanderberg is the editor of Ghostbird Press and a PhD student at St. John’s University. He is the author of several chapbooks including war/torn, recently released from Finishing Line Press. He lives and teaches on Long Island.
The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2024 Winter Literature Grant to Queens College MFA alum zakia henderson-brown for her upcoming collection of poems “Power Theory”.
Since 2007 the foundation has supported and fostered talented artists of all kinds, enabling them to enhance their craft and realize their artistic vision. The awards are established to support and encourage artists residing in New York City who are currently working in music, visual arts, performance and literature.
zakia henderson-brown is a 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Poetry Fellow and the author of What Kind of Omen Am I, winner of Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship, selected by Cate Marvin. She was a Poets House Emerging Poets fellow, and has received additional fellowships and support from the Fine Arts Work Center, Callaloo Journal, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Cave Canem. Her poems have appeared in Adroit, African American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, the Brooklyn Review, Burner Magazine, Epiphany, Little Patuxent Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Reverie, No, Dear, North American Review, Obsidian, the Offing, Thethepoetry.com, Torch, Under a Warm Green Linden, Vinyl, Washington Square Review, and the anthologies New Daughters of Africa (Amistad: 2019) and Why I Am Not a Painter (Argos: 2011).
She has worked as a community organizer at Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; as a researcher at UNITE HERE!, a resource coordinator at Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs; and as a research associate at the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College. She completed the 2010 Activate! organizing fellowship at Social Justice Leadership and is an emerita board member of the Brooklyn Movement Center, where she co-founded the anti-gendered and sexualized street harassment collective, No Disrespect.
zakia was selected as a finalist for the 2021 Publishers Weekly Star to Watch program, selected as a finalist for the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize by A. Van Jordan, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 by Under a Warm Green Linden and in 2013 by Beloit Poetry Journal, and has been in residence at the T.S. Eliot House, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Louis Armstrong House Museum. She currently serves as a senior editor at nonprofit publisher The New Press. She is a Brooklyn native and loyalist.
Power Theory focuses on how different actors navigate, exercise, and grapple with power across different contexts. Overall, the project focuses on the mundane, fraught, and necessary ways we connect with one another in the natural and socially constructed worlds, across both time and circumstance. But these poems also explore the ways we alternately wield and relinquish power *in order to* connect, especially in times of great conflict. Some of these poems explore family loss, and the ensuing grief that comes along with it; the sometimes transcendent experience of mourning, and how we must relinquish power to truly heal. Some of the poems in the manuscript explore how women exercise and navigate power in the face of daunting, entrenched patriarchal obstacles. Still others of these poems explore how to grapple with power in a racialized and social justice context, the seemingly never-ending push and pull that we all must engage. The poems explore all of these while remaining at turns tonally playful and somber, and experimenting with conventions of the line and sonnets.
MFA alum Jonathan Alexandratos isn’t just in this collection of plays by eight non-binary playwrights, called Beyond the Binary. They created the book, pitched it to Next Stage Press, edited it, contributed a play, its introduction, and wrote its preface.
This is one of the great things about the MFA Program at Queens College: it teaches you to be a self-starter. No one waits to be handed a stipend or have doors opened for them here. Jonathan saw the need for this collection to exist and created this love letter to nonbinary joy!
Gender non-binary theatre has a long and diverse history, yet modern stages scarcely spotlight its stories. Beyond the Binary: Eight Non-Binary Plays changes this by presenting short plays from non-binary playwrights that intersect with race, class, religion, politics, and pop culture. Audiences can meet Joan of Arc, hear toys talk, visit New York City, feel the heartbeat of a family, and more – all through the lens of non-binary playwrights. These pieces can be assembled into an evening of theatre that centers non-binary experiences, or they can be broken up and integrated into larger events. They are also ideal for classroom use and individual inspiration. The plays contained here are a love letter to non-binary joy, and they can’t wait to celebrate with you.
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