MFA alum Katie Machen has a new piece in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative called “The Cheese Case.”
If you’re like me, and love food writing–or food in your writing–you should go check out this gorgeous, reflective piece!
https://www.riverteethjournal.com/blog/2023/09/25/the-cheese-case
This just in: the Los Angeles Review of Books published a little throwback feature on our own Briallen Hopper’s first book Hard to Love, and it (of course) has a little shoutout to this fine program!
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You should go check out “What Came After Spinsters” and see for yourself!
https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/klegar-archive-hopper/
Last week, Esquire published a long essay about a new emergence of literary friendships in writing. I know here at QC, we’ve always prided ourselves on collaboration and community (because we feel that creating support for your writing is the key to success) which is why we’re so glad to see this becoming more of a trend in the literary world.
And, MFA alum Catherina LaSota appears in this essay too, talking about both her writing practice and her former project of the LIC Reading Series, so this is doubly exciting!
Go check out The Rise of Literary Friendships right now!
MFA alum Catherine LaSota is taking part in the Brooklyn Book Festival’s fantastic lineup of events with this doozy:
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
About the event
Amant
315 Maujer Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206
This reading is free to attend. RSVP here.
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 The New 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.
https://www.petescandystore.com/calendar/
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
TO JOIN VIA ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7973756638
MEETING ID: 797 375 6638
BIOS:
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 are so thrilled to share that our own Kimiko Hahn is this year’s winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the lifetime achievement award from the Poetry Foundation & Poetry Magazine!
Presented annually, it is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and one of the nation’s largest literary prizes. Congratulations, Kimiko!!! This is well deserved!
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!
MFA student Sonia Arora is starting off the semester on a high note, with two poems being published: one in Shadowplay, and the other in the brand-new September issue of Elysium Review.
Shadowplay is a print journal, available for purchase on Amazon, but you can read Sonia’s poem in Elysium right here:
https://www.elysiumreview.com/sonia-arora.html
Congratulations, Sonia!
