Podcasts about rona jaffe foundation writers award

Even our podcast editor describes author Karen Outen as "a breath of fresh air." After twenty years of work, her book, Dixon Descending, features two brothers with a seemingly impossible goal: To be the first Black American men to summit Everest. We discuss how Karen learned to write realistic dialogue that jumps off the page, her publishing journey of more than 20 years, and how to pitch complicated ideas--and know when they're ready to send to agents. Karen Outen's fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The North American Review, Essence, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and has been a fellow at both the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. She received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Maryland. Transcript here: http://manuscriptacademy.com/podcast-karen-outen The journey to Everest (00:00:43) Karen discusses the audacious journey of Dixon and Nate to summit Mount Everest, the challenges they face, and the consequences of their actions. The fascination with Mount Everest (00:02:15) Karen and the unnamed guest discuss the allure of writing about Mount Everest and the unique experience of researching and writing about mountain climbing. The concept of "second-tier fun" (00:04:29) The guests delve into the concept of "second-tier fun," discussing the challenges and rewards of writing and mountain climbing, and the enjoyment found in retrospect. The mountain as a living force (00:05:39) Karen and the hosts explore the idea of Mount Everest as an embodied force, discussing the climbers' relationship with the mountain and its impact on their experiences. Karen's publishing journey (00:07:10) Karen shares her long journey to publishing her novel, including the challenges, rejections, and the support she received from the writing community. The importance of writer friends (00:10:04) The discussion revolves around the significance of having a supportive community of writer friends and the impact of their encouragement and guidance. Finding inspiration for the book (00:11:17) Karen reads the opening page of "Dixon Descending" and discusses the process of refining the first page and the structure of the novel. The journey of character development (00:13:24) Karen shares her process of discovering the central theme of the book and the challenges of structuring the narrative to balance the present and the past. Exploring consequences and character stakes (00:16:17) The conversation focuses on the development of character stakes, the consequences faced by Dixon, and the complexities of his relationships and responsibilities. The dynamics of dialogue (00:22:36) The discussion centers on the distinct and vivid dialogue in the book, and Karen shares insights and tips on writing compelling dialogue. Revision Process (00:31:28) Insights into the author's revision process, including techniques and the role of feedback from readers. Bravery in Publishing (00:34:30) The author's perseverance and challenges faced in the publishing journey. Pitching Complicated Work (00:46:18) Tips for summarizing complex stories and knowing when a manuscript is ready for submission. Efficiency and Core of the Story (00:47:24) Understanding the efficiency of storytelling and presenting the core of the narrative.

Alabama Poet Laureate and Celebrated Author Ashley M. Jones Joins the Chats to Talk Literacy and Writing Journey.About AshleyAshley M. Jones is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017),  dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020, and her collection, REPARATIONS NOW! was on the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches Creative Writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and in the Low Residency MFA at Converse University. Jones co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine, and she is a 2022 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow. Humanity Chats - a conversation about everyday issues that impact humans. Join us. Together, we can go far. Thank you for listening. Share with a friend. We are humans. From all around the world. One kind only. And that is humankind. Your friend, Marjy Marj

Ashley M. Jones is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020, and her collection, REPARATIONS NOW! was on the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches Creative Writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and in the Low Residency MFA at Converse University. Jones co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Scott Evan Davis is a multi-award winning composer/lyricist and social media personality. Scott has performed concerts and song cycles of his music throughout the USA as well as internationally. His two albums, Next and Cautiously Optimistic are available worldwide and feature a host of Broadway talent. Currently Scott is developing his first full -length musical called INDIGO, with Sing Out Louise Productions. The show is about a non- verbal girl with autism who teaches everyone around her how to truly communicate. Scott's awards include the 2017 MAC award for Best Song, the 2012 Broadway World award for Best Original Song for “If We Say Goodbye,” and the 2016 ASCAP GORNEY award for his song “If the World Only Knew” for its social message. His newest single “Falling Everyday” is available on all streaming platforms. More at www.scottevandavis.com Ashley Griggs is a screenwriter who hails from Herndon, VA. She earned her BA in Film Studies and French at the College of William & Mary, and later received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where she was awarded a Future Screenwriters Fellowship. In addition to screenwriting, Ashley has done work for the Cannes Film Festival and Austin Film Festival, written for the narrative podcast The Host, directed plays in NYC and LA, and mentors teens with nonprofit WriteGirl LA. Ashley currently works with the Writers' Program and Entertainment Studies division at UCLA Extension and lives in Los Angeles. Music: “You Don't Always Get What You Want” Rolling Stones “Falling Everyday” Lyrics by Scott Evan Davis and performed by Joey Auch Special Thanks Goes to: Woodbridge Inn: www.woodbridgeinnjasper.com Autism Speaks: www.autismspeaks.org Mostly Mutts: www.mostlymutts.org Meadowbrook Inn: www.meadowbrook-inn.com The Red Phone Booth: www.redphonebooth.com The host, Clifford Brooks, The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics and Athena Departs are available everywhere books are sold. His chapbook, Exiles of Eden, is only available through my website. To find them all, please reach out to him at: cliffordbrooks@southerncollectiveexperience.com Check out his Teachable courses on thriving with autism and creative writing as a profession here: www.brooks-sessions.teachable.com

As contemporary as they come, these poets explore current landscapes, tangled legacies, and the debts we owe through language that digs deep, holds fast, and can't soon be forgotten.Panelists:Adam Clay was born and raised in Mississippi. He is the author of four book of poems. His most recent collection, To Make Room for the Sea, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2020. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Bennington Review, Georgia Review, Boston Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission. He directs the Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi, where he teaches creative writing and edits Mississippi Review.Ashley M. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel and dark / / thing. Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival.Catherine Pierce is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days (2020), The Tornado Is the World (2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Each of her last three books received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mississippi Arts Commission. Pierce's work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Southern Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. She is professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.Richard Boada is the author of the poetry collections: We Find Each Other in the Darkness, The Error of Nostalgia, and Archipelago Sinking. He is the recipient of the 2020 Mississippi Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and has been nominated for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award in 2013, 2015, and 2021. He is a graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His poetry appears in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Urban Voices: 51 Poets / 51 Poems, Rhino, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry East, North American Review, and Third Coast, among others. Currently, he teaches creative writing at the West Virginia Wesleyan College MFA Low Residency Program. Sandra Beasley is the author of four poetry collections-Made to Explode, Count the Waves, I Was the Jukebox, which won the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling-as well as Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir and cultural history of food allergies. She served as the editor for Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Honors for her work include the 2019 Munster Literature Centre's John Montague International Poetry Fellowship, a 2015 NEA fellowship, and five DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowships. She lives in Washington, D.C.Moderator:Derrick Harriell is the author of Stripper in Wonderland (LSU Press, 2017). He is an Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life. Our Faith in Writing is a podcast that explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. In this episode, Charlotte talks to poet Ashley M. Jones about her writing life, her faith, and more. Ashley M. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She currently serves as the O'Neal Library's Lift Every Voice Scholar and as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte's writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Charlotte Donlon talks to poet Ashley M. Jones about her writing life, her faith, and more. Ashley M. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and_ REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at _CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She currently serves as the O’Neal Library’s Lift Every Voice Scholar and as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Find Ashley on Twitter at @ashberry813 Follow Ashley on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PoetAshleyMJones/ Ashley's Website https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/ A Few of Ashley's Upcoming Events and Readings Why It Matters (Tuesday, February 16, 2021) https://www.facebook.com/events/465717017784130 LIFT EVERY VOICE: THE POET IN YOU (Tuesday, February, 23, 2021) https://www.facebook.com/514691570/posts/10157671255806571/?d=n University of Missouri Visiting Writers Series (Thursday, February 25, 2021) More information coming soon. Links to Ashley's Books REPARATIONS NOW! (Available for Pre-order) https://www.hubcity.org/books/poetry/reparations-now dark / / thing https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/dark-thing/ Magic City Gospel https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/magic-city-gospel/ A Few of Ashley's Poems She Read During This Episode God Made My Whole Body https://therumpus.net/2020/03/rumpus-original-poetry-three-poems-by-ashley-m-jones/ My Grandfather Returns as Oil From Ashley's book dark//thing (https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/dark-thing/) Links to Some of Ashley's Essays: Amanda Gorman Reminded America What Poetry Can Do https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/22/opinions/amanda-gorman-affirmed-poetry-and-me-ashley-m-jones/index.html When God Calls My Name https://scalawagmagazine.org/2021/01/when-god-calls-my-name/ Magic City Poetry Festival https://www.magiccitypoetryfestival.org/ More about Charlotte Donlon, Host of Art and Faith Unplugged: Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a certified spiritual director. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University where she studied creative nonfiction. Charlotte’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, Catapult, The Millions, The Curator The Christian Century, Mockingbird, _and elsewhere. Her first book, _The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other, was published Broadleaf Books in November 2020. More about Charlotte and her work can be found at charlottedonlon.com. You can sign up for her email newsletter powered by Substack at charlottedonlon.substack.com. And you can connect with Charlotte on Twitter and Instagram at @charlottedonlon.

Denise Frasier and Theo Hilton discuss this upcoming event. "Join Gulf South Writer in the Woods Ladee Hubbard and culinary historian Jessica Harris for a discussion of Hubbard’s new novel, "The Rib King" on Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at 6pm CT. Hubbard works to deconstruct painful African American stereotypes and offers a fresh and searing critique on race, class, privilege, ambition, exploitation, and the seeds of rage in America in this intricately woven and masterfully executed historical novel, set in the early twentieth century, that centers around the Black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family. Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, "The Rib King" is an unsparing examination of America’s fascination with Black iconography and exploitation that redefines African American stereotypes in literature. In this powerful, disturbing, and timely novel, Ladee Hubbard reveals who people actually are, and most importantly, who and what they are not. Ladee Hubbard served as the 2019-2020 Gulf South Writer in the Woods, a program of A Studio in the Woods and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South that supports the creative work, scholarship and community engagement of writers examining the Gulf South region. --- Ladee Hubbard is the author of "The Talented Ribkins" which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Times Literary Supplement, Arkansas International, Copper Nickel and Callaloo among other venues. She is a recipient of a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and has also received fellowships from Art Omi, the Sacatar Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts among other places. Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, she currently lives in New Orleans with her husband and three children. Jessica B. Harris is an award-winning food historian and one of the world’s leading experts on African Diaspora cooking. She is the author of the memoir, "My Soul Looks Back" (Simon & Schuster, 2017) about her youth in Harlem in the Seventies, where her social circle included James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Nina Simone and other leading black intellectuals and artists of the time. She is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora as well, including "Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking", "Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking", "The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking", "The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent", and "Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim". Harris also conceptualized and organized "The Black Family Reunion Cookbook". Her book, "High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America", was the International Association for Culinary Professionals 2012 prize winner for culinary history. For more information, please contact Regina Cairns at 504-314-2854 or rcairns@tulane.edu"

In this episode, I interview Fowzia Karimi, an award-winning author of her illustrated debut novel, "Above Us the Milky Way." Fowzia Karimi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. She immigrated to the US in 1980, after the Soviet invasion of the country. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, California. Her work explores the correspondence on the page between the written and the visual arts.She is a recipient of The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and has illustrated The Brick House by Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Vagrants and Uncommon Visitors by A. Kendra Green.

For a special holiday episode of the Writer’s Voice podcast, Rebecca Curtis reads “The Christmas Miracle,” her story from the December 23 & 30, 2013, issue of the magazine. Curtis is the author of the story collection “Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money” and a winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for Fiction.

We had the pleasure of speaking with poet and educator, Ashley M. Jones. Ashley M. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel, dark / / thing , and her upcoming collection, REPARATIONS NOW! . Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. This episode was recorded shortly after the 2020 Presidential election. So, we get into a little politics, how she found poetry and her love for her Southern heritage. Check out Ashley's work at ashleymjones.wordpress.com.

Rebecca Curtis reads her story from the November 16, 2020, issue of the magazine. Curtis is the author of the story collection “Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money” and a winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for Fiction. 

Award-winning writer Vanessa Hua joins the GrottoPod summer reading series today to share a taste of her short story "VIP Tutoring" from her newly reissued collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities. Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of A River of Stars. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, among others. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Panama, and Ecuador, and her work appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

NICOLETTE POLEK is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is a recipient of the 2019 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Imaginary Museums is her debut collection and you should get it here: https://softskull.com/dd-product/imaginary-museums/ As always thanks to Keegan Grandbois, Holler Boys, and Alec Sturgis for the fantastic music.

Where is all of the literary love for Queens? It’s right here at LIC Reading Series. Join them each week for stories, readings, and discussions with acclaimed writers, recorded with a live audience in the cozy carriage house of a classic pub in Long Island City, Queens, New York, and hosted by founder Catherine LaSota. This week, the podcast features the reading and panel discussion from the LIC Reading Series event on December 10, 2019, celebrating Writers of Queens, with Siri Hustvedt, Helen Phillips, and Jason Tougaw. About the Readers: Siri Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, Reading to You; seven novels, The Blindfold, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, What I Loved, The Sorrows of an American, The Summer Without Men, The Blazing World, and Memories of the Future, as well as four essay collections, A Plea for Eros; Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting; Living, Thinking, Looking; A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women and a work of nonfiction: The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves. Hustvedt has a PhD from Columbia University in English Literature and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Her scholarly interests are interdisciplinary. She has given numerous lectures at scientific and academic conferences on philosophy, neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry, and literature, and published papers in scientific and scholarly journals. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities (2012). The Blazing World was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won The Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction 2014). In 2019, she was awarded the European Essay Prize from the Charles Veillon Foundation for The Delusions of Certainty, an essay on the mind/body problem, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the Princess of Asturias Award in Spain for the body of her work. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages. Hustvedt lives in Brooklyn, New York. Helen Phillips is the author of five books, including, most recently, the novel The Need, a 2019 National Book Award nominee. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the Italo Calvino Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and the New York Times, and on Selected Shorts. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Douglas Thompson, and their children. Jason Tougaw is the author of The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize. He is currently completing a novel, Summer Isn’t, as part of his mission to write about the brain and identity in every genre he can. He is also the author of The Elusive Brain: Literary Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience, and Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel. His work as appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, OUT magazine, and Largehearted Boy. He blogs about art and science at www.californica.net. * This event was made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where is all of the literary love for Queens? It’s right here at LIC Reading Series. Join them each week for stories, readings, and discussions with acclaimed writers, recorded with a live audience in the cozy carriage house of a classic pub in Long Island City, Queens, New York, and hosted by founder Catherine LaSota. This week, the podcast features the reading and panel discussion from the LIC Reading Series event on December 10, 2019, celebrating Writers of Queens, with Siri Hustvedt, Helen Phillips, and Jason Tougaw. About the Readers: Siri Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, Reading to You; seven novels, The Blindfold, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, What I Loved, The Sorrows of an American, The Summer Without Men, The Blazing World, and Memories of the Future, as well as four essay collections, A Plea for Eros; Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting; Living, Thinking, Looking; A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women and a work of nonfiction: The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves. Hustvedt has a PhD from Columbia University in English Literature and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Her scholarly interests are interdisciplinary. She has given numerous lectures at scientific and academic conferences on philosophy, neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry, and literature, and published papers in scientific and scholarly journals. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities (2012). The Blazing World was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won The Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction 2014). In 2019, she was awarded the European Essay Prize from the Charles Veillon Foundation for The Delusions of Certainty, an essay on the mind/body problem, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the Princess of Asturias Award in Spain for the body of her work. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages. Hustvedt lives in Brooklyn, New York. Helen Phillips is the author of five books, including, most recently, the novel The Need, a 2019 National Book Award nominee. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the Italo Calvino Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and the New York Times, and on Selected Shorts. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Douglas Thompson, and their children. Jason Tougaw is the author of The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize. He is currently completing a novel, Summer Isn’t, as part of his mission to write about the brain and identity in every genre he can. He is also the author of The Elusive Brain: Literary Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience, and Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel. His work as appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, OUT magazine, and Largehearted Boy. He blogs about art and science at www.californica.net. * This event was made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nicolette Polek is the guest. Her new story collection, Imaginary Museums, is available from Soft Skull Press. Polek is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio and is a recipient of the 2019 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers in 2011 and was selected for the Africa 39, a 2014 Hay Festival project to identify the best African writers under 40. Her first published story, 'Muzungu', was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African writing. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for her story 'The Sack'. The Old Drift is her first novel. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Deceit and Other Possibilities (Willow Books) In this powerful debut collection, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to none. From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal, to an obedient daughter turned Stanford imposter, to a Chinatown elder summoned to his village, to a Korean-American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in these ten stories vividly illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. In “What We Have is What We Need,” winner of The Atlantic student fiction prize, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together. With insight and wit, she writes about what wounds us and what we must survive. Her searing stories explore the clash of cultures and the complex, always shifting allegiances that we carry in ourselves, our family, and our community. Deceit and Other Possibilities marks the emergence of a remarkable new writer. Praise for Deceit and Other Possibilities "Vanessa Hua inhabits in graceful and heartbreaking detail the people of her stories: strivers and betrayers, lovers and the landless, all of them on their way to transcendence in her hands. – Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here and Highwire Moon    "Fast-paced, dazzling, smart, and fun, Vanessa Hua's debut collection illustrates the insanities and heartbreaks on both sides of the Pacific." – Gary Shteyngart, author of  Little Failure and  Super Sad True Love Story "Deceit and Other Possibilities gives us characters whose lives are constrained and yet also enriched by different borders, cultures, and traditions. A bracing and beautiful debut, full of fire and light."–Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account "Complicated, cosmopolitan and utterly contemporary, Deceit and Other Possibilities is a richly enjoyable collection.  Hua is expert at creating both empathy and suspense whether it's in the emptiness of a national park or the crowded space of an international flight.  These stories will jump right off the page into the reader's imagination."–Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy For nearly two decades, Vanessa Hua has covered Asia and the diaspora in journalism and in fiction, writing about the ways immigrants bring their traditions, their histories, and their ambitions to America. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award for Fiction, and is a past Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, FRONTLINE/World, Washington Post, Guernica, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. A former staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, she has filed stories from China, South Korea, Panama, Burma and Ecuador. She is a graduate of Stanford University and UC Riverside's MFA program. She lives in the Bay Area with her family. Naomi Hirahara is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction writer. Her Mas Arai mystery series, which features a Southern California-based gardener and Hiroshima survivor, has been published in Japanese, Korean and French. The sixth in the series, Sayonara Slam, was released in May of this year. Her short stories have been included in Los Angeles Noir, Asian Pulp and Hanzai Japan. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo, she also is involved in the preservation of Japanese American and regional history in the form of books and exhibitions.  

Aug. 30, 2014. Tiphanie Yanique appears at the 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Speaker Biography: Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the short story collection "How to Escape from a Leper Colony," the picture book "I Am the Virgin Islands" and the novel "Land of Love and Drowning" (Riverhead). Her writing has won the 2011 BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Fiction, the Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize and an Academy of American Poet's Prize. She has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of 16 cultural figures to watch out for and by the National Book Foundation as one of the 5 Under 35. Her writing has been published in Best African American Fiction, The Wall Street Journal, American Short Fiction and elsewhere. Yanique is also the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6414

Namwali Serpell’s nonfiction work has appeared in The Believer and Bidoun; her fiction in Callaloo and Tin House. Her first short story, “Muzungu,” was selected to appear in The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Literature. In 2011, she was one of six recipients of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women write. Series: "Story Hour in the Library" [Humanities] [Show ID: 24374]

Namwali Serpell’s nonfiction work has appeared in The Believer and Bidoun; her fiction in Callaloo and Tin House. Her first short story, “Muzungu,” was selected to appear in The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Literature. In 2011, she was one of six recipients of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women write. Series: "Story Hour in the Library" [Humanities] [Show ID: 24374]

Frances Hwang teaches at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Her short story collection, Transparency, won the American Academy of Arts and Letters’s Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and a PEN/Beyond Margins Award. She has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Colgate University. Her work has been read as part of the Selected Shorts series at Symphony Space and has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Best New American Voices, Glimmer Train, Tin House, AGNI Online, and Subtropics.