Nicole Cooley published seventh poetry collection, Mother Water Ash, to rave reviews this fall, including this round-up in Literary Hub and this latest in Rhino. She’s been doing readings all over the country. Don’t miss her if she reads near you.
Richard Prins (2024) was chosen–and is now published!–in this year’s edition of The Best American Essays.
Richard studied Swahili translation and creative nonfiction in the program, and wrote the award-winning essay, “Because: An Etiology” for a class. Huge congratulations to Richard!
Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Best Year in Music: 1994
Tuesday, Nov 19, 2024 from 8-10pm
L.I.C. Bar (Carriage House) 45-58 Vernon Blvd, L.I.C., NYC 11101
Literature is coming back to LIC Bar, but with a twist: it’s a celebration of music alongside words.
MFA alum Catherina LaSota will will tinker on her Fender Mustang while hosting Emily Raboteau, Brian Gresko, & Nicole Haroutunian, who will offer their reflections on the music of 1994 (considered by many to be the greatest single year of music for all time) along with some brand-new writing.
I think the bigger question is whether this is a reunion of LaSota’s reading series, or just an encore from those days–founded in 2015, LIC Reading Series quickly became one of the literary standouts in the borough of Queens, along with the rise of Newtown Literary and other reading series in Queens, such as Oh, Bernice! which was also run by QC MFA alums.
Queens may be more established now as a cultural destination in the hearts of New Yorkers, but we can always use the return of one of the best literary programs in the borough. (Just saying, Catherine, if you’re reading this!)
Catherine LaSota is just one of the amazing people who have come through the QC MFA Program. To hear about more, take a look at our Alumni Bookshelf:
Our own program director, Jason Tougaw, has written a piece for Psychology Today about Asher Young’s immersive art installation Living Memory, which allows people to visit with holograms made from photographs they submit of departed loved ones.
The result is another step in the evolution of how media and technology can not just assist us as we grieve, but actually shape how we remember those we’ve lost. Tougaw describes his encounter with one of these holograms and explores how this experience can be both painful and a joy in his piece.
If you’ve lost someone, maybe you should read it too:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-elusive-brain/202411/twenty-first-century-grief
Wednesday, November 20th, 6-7 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.
Please join our virtual Open House on Wednesday, November 20th, from 6-7 PM to find out whether the Queens College MFA Program is the right choice for you. 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/tZ0sfu2trzovGNeX8IPOsdi5nHanI-CPfAY9
Fri, Nov 8, 2024
7:00 PM–8:30 PM
The Word is Change Bookstore
368 Tompkins Ave. (at Putnam), Brooklyn, NY 11216.
Free and open to all.
This Friday is the book launch of Anna Gréki’s Algeria, capital: Algiers. Translator Marine Cornuet (a QC MFA alum) will read alongside friends Radhika Singh (another QC MFA alum) who will read an excerpt of her science fiction manuscript that, like Gréki’s work, envisions liberated futures, and translator and poet David Iaconangelo (himself a current QC MFA student) who will read his translation of a poem by Miguel Hernández, one of Gréki’s inspirations. As Gréki puts it, “there will be joy / but we will forget nothing of what has happened.”
This is the kind of reading we here at the Queens College MFA Program are overjoyed to see because it shows how connected members of the QC MFA community can be. We find connections, and those connections make us better.
It’s not lost on us that the foreword is written by QC faculty member Ammiel Alcalay. This book is copublished by Lost & Found, CUNY’s innovative publishing initiative from the CUNY Graduate Center, which Ammiel edits. Algeria, capital: Algiers was written by Anna Gréki while in prison for her participation in the Algerian liberation struggle. This co-publication, shared between CUNY’s Lost & Found and worldwide with Pinsapo Press, makes this work available to English readers for the first time.
Working on cutting-edge and innovative translations with Lost & Found is just one of the many paths our students can take. To find out more of the options available to MFA students, please visit our Opportunities Page:
We are so excited to announce that the winner of this year’s Birdhouse Prize is MFA alum Richard Prins, for his manuscript, We May Eat Fruit. The chapbook is not available yet on the Ghostbird Press website, but we wanted to let you all know the good news right away!
You may remember that, just this year, Richard has also been included in The Best American Essays 2024 and won an NEA Fellowship, so we’re overjoyed Richard was able to add this as the capstone to a great year!
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.
Winning a chapbook prize with your thesis is only one of the great opportunities you only get as a QC MFA student. Discover more on our Opportunities page!
The Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, invites you to a Virtual Open House. Classes are small, mostly in the evening, and students work closely with faculty mentors. Use the QR code to register and learn more.
Our own Professor Briallen Hopper has just published a personal essay for Public Books called “A Tale of Two Graduations,” based on her experience attending two People’s Graduations last spring: one for Columbia and one for CUNY.
In Hopper’s description of the events, we can see the class inequities that have divided the city’s college students for some time:
“Columbia’s was held at the largest church in North America, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a beautiful bastion of Gothic architecture and WASP wealth.
CUNY’s was held by the basketball court at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem, in front of a weathered chain-link fence.”
But we also see how both ceremonies were acts of joy and a testament to the students who organized and participated in these events.
Last year’s People’s Graduations, for those who don’t know, were independent commencement ceremonies organized by faculty and staff members from schools in response to the punishment of students who participated in pro-Palestine campus protests. I know this is a sensitive and complicated issue for a lot of people, let alone for members of the QC community, but no matter what your stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict is, I feel we all can appreciate these ceremonies and this essay as a testament to the resiliency of our students that are willing to stand up for their constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful protest.
We hope you read it with this in mind:
10 River Terrace New York, NY 10282 | Tuesday| October 29 | 7-9pm
In honor of our own Distinguished Professor Kimiko Hahn’s achievement as a poet, curator, and professor, Poet’s House will be holding a tribute reading at the end of the month featuring Tamiko Beyer, Mark Doty, and Roger Sedarat, and of course Kimiko Hahn herself.
Ever the innovator, Hahn’s latest book, The Ghost Forest (W.W. Norton, 2024), is not just a book of selected poems after a long and illustrious career, but a conversation–the book opens with forty-three new formally inventive poems and leading the reader back in time through selections from her ten previous volumes. This exchange between old and new work, between tradition and identity, transforms this book into a hybrid autobiography.
Hahn will read from the new poems in the collection, while guest poets will read selections of their favorite works by Hahn throughout the decades.
The reading will take place in Poets House’s Kray Hall, with a reception to follow.
As fans of poetry, we hope to see you there!
