The Nassau Literary Review Presents our 2021 Literary & Arts Festival:
METAMORPHOSES
The Nassau Literary Review’s 8th annual literary festival
The past year has been one of tumultuous change—change forced upon us, and change we the people sought. This festival will examine how writing and publishing have transformed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our nation’s ongoing racial reckoning, and otherwise.
The festival is from May 17-21, 2021 on Zoom. It is free and open to the public.
May 17, 9 PM EST: A reading with K-Ming Chang, author of Bestiary
May 18, 9 PM EST: Panel discussion with professionals from literary magazine One Story and independent publishers Graywolf, Milkweed, and Spiegel & Grau on changes in literary publishing
May 19, 9 PM EST: A conversation with Lydia Millet, author of A Children’s Bible
May 20, 7:30 PM EST: Conversation and Q&A on transformative literary spaces with Muzzle Magazine
9 PM EST: Poetry workshop with Raena Shirali
May 21, 9 PM EST: Reading by winners of our national undergraduate writing competition
SIGN UP HERE: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0D48A5AA2DA7F8C25-nassau
ABOUT OUR GUESTS
K-Ming Chang
K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the New York Times Editors’ Choice novel Bestiary (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her short story collection, Resident Aliens, is forthcoming from One World. More of her work can be found at kmingchang.com.
Aaron Robertson
Aaron Robertson is a writer, translator, and editor at Spiegel & Grau. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and elsewhere. His first book, The Black Utopians, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2023.
Bailey Hutchinson
Bailey Hutchinson is an associate editor and bookseller at Milkweed Editions. Prior to joining Milkweed in 2019, she was Assistant Director of Open Mouth Reading Series in Fayetteville, AR. She earned a BA in English Literature from Rhodes College and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arkansas, where she served as both Poetry Editor and Social Media Editor for The Arkansas International. Her writing can be found in Beloit Poetry Journal, Muzzle Magazine, BOAAT, Waxwing, and more.
Chantz Erolin
Chantz Erolin is an editor at Graywolf Press, where he was the Inaugural Citizen Literary Fellow. He acquires and edits poetry and critical nonfiction manuscripts and serves as in-house copyeditor. He lives in South Minneapolis where he was raised.
Lena Valencia
Lena Valencia is the director of educational programming and managing editor of One Story. Previously, she held positions at A Public Space and BOMB Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Epiphany, Joyland, BOMB, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in fiction from The New School and has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation grant.
Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals. Her 2020 novel A Children’s Bible was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction and one of The New York Times Book Review’s Best 10 Books of 2020. In 2019 she received a short-fiction Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010 her collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She also writes essays, opinion pieces and other ephemera and has been an editor and writer at the Center for Biological Diversity, a group dedicated to fighting extinction and climate change, since 1999. She lives in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona.
Muzzle Magazine
For the past decade, Muzzle Magazine has published writing of revolution and revelation, and in 2020, on the precipice of a new decade, we will continue seeking submissions that move us not just in feeling, but also in intention. We resist the notion that a journal must have a fixed aesthetic, or that submissions for a new issue should mimic the style or approach of poems in previous issues. Instead, we are looking for poems that move (us) beyond. Institutionalized hate, discrimination, exploitation, rape, violence, tangible and intangible theft, and other abuses of power are older than this country. To that end, we are dedicated to upholding marginalized voices, and prioritize submissions by BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disAbled authors. We are seeking new answers to old questions and old answers to new questions. We are seeking something we don’t know how to name yet.
Brittany Rogers
Brittany Rogers is a poet, mother, educator, and native Detroiter. She has work published or forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, The Offing, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and Tinderbox Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in “The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic” and “Best of the Net”. Brittany is a fellow of VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is Co-Editor in Chief for Muzzle Magazine and a MFA candidate and Blackburn Fellow at Randolph College.
Raena Shirali
Raena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), which won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. Her poems & reviews have appeared widely in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Shirali lives in Philadelphia, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine. Learn more at www.raenashirali.com.
