Diana Khoi Nguyen is a first-generation Vietnamese-American poet whose book, Ghost Of, is an elegy for her brother, and she explores the difficulties felt by parents from this culture. A brief Q&A will follow this evening event.
Writer, teacher, and tattoo artist, Phuc Tran, reads from his humorous and introspective memoir, “Sigh, Gone. A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In”, about his family’s escape from Vietnam, displacement in America, and his struggle to fit in during high school. A brief Q&A will follow this lunchtime event.
Writer Kim Adrian reads from her memoir “The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet” and discusses growing up with the confusion and chaos of mental illness and generational trauma. A brief Q&A will follow this lunchtime event.
African American author, columnist, and public speaker Deesha Philyaw will read from her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction.
This event will also be available virtually via Zoom, register here.
Part seance, part collective automatic writing, part investigation of philosophical texts, Ancient Evenings will be a collective spiritual awakening in our own Cole Memorial Chapel. Come and explore the Western Canon through your own subversive and politically aware writing. Discover how you creatively think about rational thinking. Participants should bring a pad of paper and a writing implement. Light refreshments will be served before the event outside the Chapel.
A freelance writer and editor, Rebecca Long reports on a wide range of topics, including politics, TV, film, literature, and environmental justice. Her writing has been featured in VICE, Bitch Media, Bust Magazine, and Electric Literature. Long’s essay about Stranger Things’ Jim Hopper was Bitch Media’s most-read article of 2019. She currently works as the Digital Content Editor at a women’s non-profit organization and previously held full-time editorial roles at National Geographic Learning and SAGE Publications. Via Zoom, registration required.
Jonathan Maniscalco has taught English to ESL learners in Japan, Spain, and New York City. A Massachusetts native, he is a graduate of Boston University and a stringer for the New England Review of Books. Ten Stories to Manhood is his first published book. Via Zoom, registration required.
Olga Livshin will discuss how culture, translation, history, current events and her own biography intermingle in her 2019 book of poems, A Life Replaced, which reflects on the experience of living as an immigrant under the Trump administration and with Putin’s war on Ukraine looming. Raised in Odessa and Moscow, Livshin writes witness poetry about xenophobia, war, and strongmen at the helm on both sides of the world. The book braids original poetry in English with translations from Anna Akhmatova, the great poet of 20th-century Russia, and Vladimir Gandelsman, fellow immigrant and winner of the Moscow Reckoning, Russia’s highest prize for poetry. Livshin’s poems, translations, and essays appear in The Kenyon Review and Poetry International, and are widely published. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature, and taught at the university level for a number of years before focusing on writing and translation.
Please join us in the May Room for a reception immediately following the lecture.
Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University and by the Russian Department at Wheaton College.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico describes himself as a poet (he guesses), a screenwriter (or whatever), a co-host of a dumb podcast for jerks, and begrudgingly as a performer. His books, IRL, Nature Poem, Junk and Feed have received numerous accolades including the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Lambda Literary Award, an American Book Award and the prestigious Whiting Award.
Wheaton alumna Sandra Yannone’s poetry amplifies the split-second when the everyday turns into catastrophe; the moment of impact when knowing and unknowing collide; the fusion of before and after. And the aftermaths. All constellate here in Yannone’s first full-length collection, Boats for Women, to orient us toward that “choice/to turn toward a sacred face, a turn/toward your own longing to live.”