Eyes Up Front: Girls Write Now at The Asian American Writers' Workshop

Eyes Up Front: Students and Teachers Read

@ The Asian American Writers' Workshop
Thursday, April 15, 2010 @ 7PM

Who says writing is all extracurricular? Tonight teachers, writers, students join together to read from their mixed-bag experiences of schooling. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum reads from her quirky novel-in-stories Ms. Hempel Chronicles, that follows seventh-grade teacher Ms. Hempel through her human struggles with teaching. As Time magazine puts it, “it’s a pleasure to be in her class.” Poets R. Erica Doyle and Bushra Rehman read alongside mentors and mentees from Girls Write Now and students from Teachers & Writers Collaborative. This cross-generational reading will take down some barriers between teachers and students, reminding you of what it was like to walk those hallways between class.

Co-sponsored by Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Girls Write Now

R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian immigrant parents, and has lived in Washington, D.C., Farmington, Connecticut, and La Marsa, Tunisia. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, Callaloo, Ploughshares, Best Black Women's Erotica, Bum Rush the Page, and Ms. Magazine.  She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and fellowships from the  New York Foundation for the Arts and from Cave Canem: A Workshop and Retreat for Black Writers. Her manuscript, proxy, was a finalist for the 2007 Cave Cavem Poetry Prize, selected by Claudia Rankine.  She received her MFA in Poetry from the New School, and she lives in New York City, where she is at work on a novel, Fortune.  Erica is a NYC public school teacher and the facilitator of Tongues Afire: A Creative Writing Workshop for queer women and trans- and gender- non-conforming people of color.

Suji Kim attends Millennium High School, where she works with Teachers and Writers. She lived in Pennsylvania until she came to New York almost two years ago. Now she lives in an apartment in Park Slope with her dad, stepmom, two cats, and a pug.

The first cover letter Nancy Mercado ever wrote began like this: “My friends are worried about me. It seems my current bookshelf resembles that of a ten year old girl.” That letter got her an interview at Scholastic Books, where she worked for four years, which led her to Penguin where she worked for six. She is currently an executive editor at Roaring Brook Press, working on middle grade and young adult novels. Born and raised in Staten Island and a graduate of SUNY Albany with a major in Spanish, this is Nancy’s first year with Girls Write Now.

Anna Poon is very proud to be back for a second year as a Girls Write Now mentee. Anna lives in Brooklyn, but goes to school in Manhattan, where she's a junior at Hunter College High School. She travels a lot, almost every day, whether it’s from one borough to another or from math class to an exotic, imaginary world. She's seen the future, where the line between human and machine becomes almost indistinguishable, but she's also witnessed the past, the mythic birth of a powerful beast called New York City, whose sparkling, multifaceted voice demands to be heard. Yet most often, she sees and experiences the human struggle to discover one’s identity and to discover one’s voice. She's got a voice, an overactive imagination, and they can only be used to tell stories. As an avid traveler of the worlds of fiction, Anna hopes to go professional one day and publish the stories and poems that advertise her favorite places to visit and her favorite people to talk to. In the meantime, she's got a journal, a cello, and a yoga mat to keep her occupied.

Kirthana Ramisetti once put herself on a pop culture diet to try to curtail the amount of time she spent reading entertainment news and celebrity gossip. That didn't work out so well–she eventually joined NextWeb Media, where as managing editor she now reads nearly every website in the universe, from Perez Hilton to Politico. Though she never envisioned that an MFA degree in creative writing from Emerson College would lead to a career that indulges her pop culture addiction, she enjoys working in the mobile media industry overseeing SMS-based trivia games. Kirthana has also been published in a variety of print and online publications, including Entertainment Weekly, East West Magazine, PopMatters nd West Side Spirit. This is her first year with Girls Write Now.

Bushra Rehman is author of the collection of poetry, Marianna's Beauty Salon (Vagabond Press, 2001), and co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Seal Press, 2002). She performs her work around the country and is currently working on an on-the-road adventure novel. Bushra's work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, KPFA, WBAI and in the New York Times, NY Newsday, Color Lines, Curve, and SAMAR. To read excerpts visit bushrarehman.com

Syeda Showkat
was born in Bangladesh–“a tiny speck of dirt off the coast of India.” She came to the United States as a four year old and is now living in it as a Bengali-American-Muslim teenager. In her first year as a Girls Write Now mentee, she writes because “my mind won’t leave me alone!”

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s first novel, Madeleine Is Sleeping, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a NEA Fellowship, she teaches writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

4, 5, 6 trains to 33rd Street

1, 2, 3, 9 trains to 34th Street