Support The English Department this Giving Tuesday Any Donation Helps This #GivingTuesday Working with the outstanding students at Queens College continues to be the greatest reward for […]

Catherine LaSota: Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Best Year in Music: 1994 Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Best Year in Music: 1994Tuesday, Nov 19, 2024 from 8-10pmL.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 some of the 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 P […] “Catherine LaSota: Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Best Year in Music: 1994”

Jason Tougaw: Twenty-First-Century Grief 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 […] “Jason Tougaw: Twenty-First-Century Grief”

QC MFA Virtual Open House Wednesday, November […] “”

Book Launch for Anna Gréki’s Algeria, Capital: Algiers translated by Marine Cornuet Fri, Nov 8, 20247:00 PM–8:30 PMThe Word is Change Bookstore368 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 av […] “Book Launch for Anna Gréki’s Algeria, Capital: Algiers translated by Marine Cornuet”

Richard Prins: Birdhouse Prize winner 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 Op […] “Richard Prins: Birdhouse Prize winner”

Briallen Hopper: A Tale of Two Graduations 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 wi […] “Briallen Hopper: A Tale of Two Graduations”

A Tribute to Kimiko Hahn 1 […] “A Tribute to Kimiko Hahn”

 All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins – Ariel Francisco It’s been a good week for alums–yesterday we announced that MFA alum Liv Mammone’s first poetry collection will come out next year with Game Over Books next August, today we can tell you that Ariel Francisco’s fourth collection, All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins, is being released by Burrow Press this month! In this collection, Ariel mourns his native Miami in this elegiac elegistic meditation on how home can be shaped by climate change and gentrification. Even more special, is that this is a bilingual edition–Spanish translations by Ariel himself appear beside the original English text. Ariel is no stranger to the QC MFA blog–you may remember his poem in  The New Yorker–but you may want to check out our virtual alumni bookshelf to se […] ” All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins – Ariel Francisco”

Liv Mammone – Fire in the Waiting Room It’s official: MFA alum Liv Mammone’s first book of poetry, Fire in the Waiting Room, is coming out with Game Over Books next August! Although this is her first collection, Liv is no stranger to publication, having been included in five different anthologies since her MFA, as well as being selected as Poem-a-Day on both the Academy of American Poets website and The Poetry Foundation. After her MFA, Liv competed team for Union Square Slam as the first disabled woman to be on a New York national poetry slam team and appeared in the play The Fall of All Atomic Angels as part of a festival that was named Best of Off Off Broadway by Time Out Magazine. We were already super proud of her, and we continue to be overjoyed by her success! Liv is just one of our many success stories here at the Queens College MFA Program. If you’d like to learn more about our alumni, please head to […] “Liv Mammone – Fire in the Waiting Room”

A Day with Cartoonist and Artist Ivan Velez – October 23 Queens College is committed to bringing writers and artists whose work speaks to the diverse community of our campus and our borough, which is why we are so proud to welcome cartoonist, writer, educator, and teaching artist Ivan Velez Jr. to campus on October 23rd. Velez will be with us all day, visiting Professor Orchard’s contemporary Latinx Literature class and giving, not one, but two comics workshops for the QC community. This event is co-sponsored by Writers at Queens, The English Department, The MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, The MFA in Social Practice, and The Program in Latino Studies, and in celebration of Queens College Hispanic Heritage Month. Bio: Ivan Velez Jr. is a Latino American cartoonist, writer, educator, and teaching artist known for the creation of the groundbreaking comic book series Tales of the Closet, and for his pioneering work with Milestone Media, Marvel, and DC Comics. He’s currently an independent cartoonist, and a teaching artist in New York and forever toils on his Creative Capital Award-winning comics project The Ballad of Wham Kabam. Schedule: 12:15-1:30pm “Monster of the Bronx: A Comics Workshop” (aimed at undergraduates), Klapper 672 (art classroom). Light refreshments served and books for sale. 1:30-2:30 Lunch 2:30-3:30 Break 3-4:30pm Visit Professor Bill Orchard’s class, English 360: A Queer Decade, Latinx Literature and Art Since 2015. King Hall 105. 4:30-5:00 Break 6:30-8pm “Drawing in Color: A Comics Workshop” (aimed at grad students in the MFA in writing, art, and MA program/several classes attending). […] “A Day with Cartoonist and Artist Ivan Velez – October 23”

2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction – Alaya Dawn Johnson Visiting Professor Alaya Dawn Johnson has been chosen for the shortlist for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! The prestigious Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction is an annual $25,000 cash prize given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction. Just ten books were chosen by the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation, with the final winner to be chosen by a selection panel of authors: Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Megan Giddings, Ken Liu, and Carmen Maria Machado. Each year, we invite a new writer to teach with us every year so that students can dive further into different aspects and genres of writing and get a fresh perspective on their work. Alaya Dawn Johnson has definitely continued in our tradition of great Visiting Professors! Her nomination for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, as well as her recent win of the Best Fiction for Younger Readers Award by the British Science Fiction Association, shows the kind of expertise you can expect from our faculty! Congratulations to Alaya for this incredible nomination! We’re hoping for more good news when the f […] “2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction – Alaya Dawn Johnson”

Sep 30: A Reading by Alaya Dawn Johnson Writers at Queens is proud to present a reading by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Johnson is this year’s visiting faculty at the Queens College MFA […]

Jason Tougaw makes the homepage of Salon That’s right, our very own Director, Jason Tougaw made the homepage of Salon this week with his article “Dems, listen to Eminem’s one-man culture war.” Salon has been a trusted destination for progressive journalism since 1995, so Jason’s exploration of Eminem’s evolving political consciousness is the perfect piece to be number one this week in this essential publication! You should go check it […] “Jason Tougaw makes the homepage of Salon”

A Reading by Alaya Dawn Johnson Writers at Queens is proud to present a reading by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Johnson is this year’s visiting faculty at the Queens College MFA Program and, fresh off her win of Ursula K. Le Guin Award, will be reading from her impressive body of work. After the reading, Johnson will join in a conversation with the QC community led by MFA alum Megan Pindling, which will be followed by a reception with refreshments and books for sale. We hope you take the chance to meet and greet this award-winning author! Admission is free to all, and will also be streamed over Zoom, via the URL below. We hope to see you there! September 30th at 7PMQueens CollegeChoral Room 264, Aaron Copland School of Musichttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/81060471449?pwd=nkqiiFe3dlrDeuU4KBYz1ERqo53aBR.1 BIO: Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for adults and young adults. Her most recent adult novel, Trouble the Saints, was the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for best novel. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, was published by Small Beer Press in January 2021. Her latest YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, is a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin award. She is current a Visiting Professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at CUNY Queens […] “A Reading by Alaya Dawn Johnson”

Alaya Dawn Johnson

Chandanie Somwaru Wins Ruth Lilly Fellowship MFA alum Chandanie Somwaru has just been named a recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. The Poetry Foundation awards five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships annually. Among the largest awards offered to young poets in the US, the $27,000 prize is intended to support exceptional US poets between 21 and 31 years of age. The fellowships were established in 1989 by the Indianapolis philanthropist Ruth Lilly and expanded in 2013 with a gift from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund. Chandanie won the Birdhouse Chapbook Prize from Ghostbird Press for Urgent Where the Mind Goes Scattered (2021) when she graduated, so we knew she was destined for great things. Her writing has been published in Poem-A-Day, Honey Literary, Solstice, SWWIM, The Margins, and other outle […] “Chandanie Somwaru Wins Ruth Lilly Fellowship”

Jason Tougaw: Psychology Today Our own Jason Tougaw has an interview in Psychology Today with Iraq War veteran Michael Ramos about Ramos’ memoir The After: A Veteran’s Notes on Coming Home. In the interview, Tougaw and Ramos explore writing for multiple audiences and other craft issues arising from depicting his experience as a soldier. There’s a reason why Psychology Today listed this under their Emotional Essential reads! Go find out for yourself while you read the interview for […] “Jason Tougaw: Psychology Today”

Small Press Flea 2024 Whe […] “Small Press Flea 2024”

Jonathan Alexandratos: Sewing Bears MFA alum Jonathan Alexandratos has created a play from idea to finish using what they are calling “The Colbert Method,” based on an anecdote seen on the Late Show tiktok account (@colbertlateshow) Stephen Colbert where he mentioned he and his friends used to take plays from concept to stage in nine days. The final product, called Sewing Bears, is based on the 1907 “Teddy Bear Scare” and is set to open on July 17th, running for only two nights: July 17th and 18th at 7:30pm in Chelsea Market’s Maker’s Studio (448 West 16th Street, New York, NY). Tickets are at $10 and $20 levels and can be purchased here. All profits benefit Girls Who Code, an organization dedicated to tearing down gender barriers in tech.  You can read more about Jonathan’s process in bringing this play to life, alongside their collaborators, in Broadway World, or buy your tickets direc […] “Jonathan Alexandratos: Sewing Bears”