Our
July reading is HOT HOT HOT! Join us for readings from Rebecca Bengal
(STRANGE HOURS), Marissa Castrigno (Barren, PANK Daily), Christopher
Hermelin (So Many Damn Books), & LaToya Jordan (TO THE WOMAN IN THE
PINK HAT).
Rebecca
Bengal is the author of the new collection Strange Hours: Photography,
Memory, and the Lives of Artists (Aperture) and a new short story,
"Blood Harmony," in Kristine Potter: Dark Waters (also Aperture).
Her
fiction, essays, and other nonfiction have been published by the Paris
Review, the New York Times, Southwest Review, Oxford American,
Bookforum, Criterion Collection, and Vogue, among others. Originally
from western North Carolina, she received her MFA from the Michener
Center for Writers and lives in Brooklyn.
Marissa
Castrigno is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Her work has
appeared in Barren, PANK Daily, Kissing Dynamite, and others; she was a
2021 Humor Finalist for the Missouri Review's Miller Audio Prize.
She's
currently Associate Editor Shenandoah and Nonfiction Editor at The
Adroit Journal, and has previously worked with Oxford American and
Ecotone. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at UNC Wilmington,
and holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University.
Christopher
Hermelin is the mixologist and host of the podcast So Many Damn Books,
has typewritten thousands of personalized short stories for strangers
under the moniker The Roving Typist, and once had an inspirational quote
printed on the side of a Starbucks cup. He’s still paying off the MFA
he got in Fiction from the New School, and lives in Brooklyn.
LaToya
Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. Her novella, To the Woman in the
Pink Hat, was published in March by Aqueduct Press. Her short fiction,
poetry, and journalism have appeared in Anomaly, Literary Mama, MER,
Raising Mothers, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more.
Her flash
story “Offering” was featured in Best Small Fictions 2021 and named
Wigleaf’s Top 50. Her essay “The Zig Zag Mother,” appears in My
Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After and
another essay, “After Striking a Fixed Object,” published by The
Manifest-Station, was notable in Best American Essays 2016.
She is also
the author of a poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar, and is currently
working on a speculative short story collection about Black girls and
women being mothered, mothering, or wanting to mother. She has an MFA in
creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Follow her on
Instagram @latoyajordanwriter.
