Electrifying, inspirational and fearless performances from our talented mentees and four professional, game-changing women writing today, all surrounding our Voice To Voice theme. 2015 showcased an incredible CHAPTERS reading series and a huge thank you to Flavorpill for helping make this happen. Learn more about our guest authors below:
Friday, March 20th: Tiphanie Yanique
Photo credit: Debbie Grossman
Tiphanie is the author of the short story collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, published by Graywolf Press in 2010, the picture book I Am the Virgin Islands, published by Little Bell Caribbean in 2012, and the novel Land of Love and Drowning, published by Riverhead/Penguin last summer. Her writing has won the 2011 BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Fiction, Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, and an Academy of American Poet’s Prize. BookPage listed her as one of the 14 Women to watch out for in 2014, she has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of the sixteen cultural figures to watch out for, the National Book Foundation named her as one of the 5 Under 35 in 2011, and she was just awarded the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. Her writing has been published in Best African American Fiction, The Wall Street Journal, American Short Fiction and other places. Yanique is also the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship.
Tiphanie grew up in the Hospital Ground/Round da Field neighborhood of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She graduated from All Saints Cathedral School and the Rising Stars Youth Steel Orchestra program. Both her mother and grandmother were librarians in the Virgin Islands. Tiphanie is now an assistant professor in the MFA and Riggio Honors programs at the New School in New York City. She lives with her husband, son and daughter. They split their time between Brooklyn and St. Thomas.
Friday, April 24th: Emily St. John Mandel
Photo credit: DeseRae L Stage
Emily was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York. Her fourth novel, Station Eleven, was a 2014 National Book Award Finalist. All four of her novels—previous books were Last Night in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun, and The Lola Quartet—were Indie Next Picks, and The Singer’s Gun was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City with her husband.
Friday, May 29th: Roxane Gay
Photo credit: Jay Grabiec
Roxane’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Salon, and many others. She is the co-editor of PANK. She is also the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, and Hunger,forthcoming from Harper in 2016.
Friday, June 19th: Quiara Alegría Hudes
For her accomplishments in the American theater and her work in the community, Quiara has been honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical, a Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical and two official Quiara Hudes Days declared in Chicago and Philadelphia. On Broadway, Hudes penned the book for the Tony Award Winning Best Musical In the Heights. Her plays include Water by the Spoonful, Elliot A Soldier’s Fugue, The Happiest Song Plays Last, and the upcoming Daphne’s Dive. They have been produced around the globe and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and German. Amongst her social advocacy work, her favorite is mentoring at Philadelphia Young Playwrights since they produced her first play in the tenth grade. Quiara lives in New York and is the Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Writing and Theater at Wesleyan University.
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