Queering Form, or Weird Fiction, Sponsored by the Center for Fiction
Thursday, March 27 1:45-3:00 p.m. PT
Petree Hall D, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level 1
Writing fiction is finding your way to something true. What if you were permitted to abolish the binaries, break every rule you were given in workshop, and dare to be as weird as your story demands? Join us for a discussion of what it means to make form work for your story, and how to find readers and editors who will help you realize your highest ambitions and imaginings.
Panelist Bios:
Kazim Ali is a professor of literary arts and comparative literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include Sukun: New and Selected Poems, the novel Indian Winter, and Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry and Poetics of Lucille Clifton. A translator and editor, he founded Nightboat Books, which publishes innovative and experimental literature, in 2004.
Photo credit: Jesse Sutton
Andrea Lawlor is the author of a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Rescue Press, 2017; Vintage, 2019; Picador UK, 2019). Their stories, essays, and poems have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, and The New York Times. They are the recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction, as well as fellowships from Lambda Literary, Radar Labs, the Ucross Foundation, and MacDowell. They are an associate professor of English and creative writing at Mount Holyoke College and live in western Massachusetts.
Henry Hoke is the author of five books, most recently the memoir Sticker and the novel Open Throat, finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. He cocreated the performance series Enter>text in Los Angeles, and edits humor at The Offing.
Nicole Caplain Kelly is a recent Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University. She won the fellowship in her final semester of the graduate writing program at Columbia University, where she was nominated for the Henfield Prize and earned her MFA. Kelly studied English literature as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford. Currently, while running the Writing Programs at The Center for Fiction, Kelly teaches for UC Berkeley’s Certificate Creative Writing Program and is at work on her first novel.