Date: Thu, March 16, 2023, 7:00 PM
Off-site event address: 78-13 Roosevelt Avenue Queens, NY 11372
Join us for a celebration of Bushra Rehman novel’s Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, an unforgettable story about female friendship and queer desire in a Pakistani-American community in Corona, Queens. This celebration will feature some of Queens most celebrated and beloved writers including Bushra Rehman, Christine Kandic Torres, Jai Dulani, Joseph O. Legaspi, Nadia Q. Ahmad, Patricia Park, and Soniya Munshi!
Music: DJ Rekha and friends
Free to RSVP here!
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AUTHOR BIOS:
Bushra Rehman: Rehman’s dark comedy, Corona, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. She is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry, Marianna’s Beauty Salon, described by Joseph O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home—and surviving.” Her new novel, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is a modern classic about what it means to be Muslim and queer in a Pakistani-American community.
Christine Kandic Torres: Born and raised in Woodside and Elmhurst, Christine Kandic Torres is the author of the novel, The Girls in Queens (HarperVia, 2022). Her Pushcart Prize-nominated short fiction has appeared in publications such as Catapult, Kweli, The Offing, and Fractured Lit. A VONA and Hedgebrook alum, she’s also the recipient of a Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant. The (cheaper!) paperback edition of The Girls in Queens will be published May 2, 2023.
Jai Dulani is a Pushcart nominated multi-genre writer. A VONA and Kundiman alum, his poetry has appeared in The Rumpus, Best New Poets 2020, Waxwing, No Tokens, and elsewhere. Dulani’s creative non-fiction has appeared in publications such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Sweet, Foglifter, and the Offing.. Dulani is co-editor of the anthology The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. His manuscript, Language We Fall Through was a finalist in the Kelsey Street Press QTBIPOC Book Prize.
Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of the collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and the chapbooks Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). He cofounded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a national organization serving generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. He lives with his husband in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Nadia Q. Ahmad is a poet, writer, editor, and workshop instructor from New York; she grew up in Inwood, Astoria, and East Elmhurst. Her work appears in publications such as QUEENSBOUND, The Shoreline Review, Poets & Writers Magazine, and AAWW’s The Margins. Nadia has received awards from Aspen Words and FAWC, and is a VONA/Voices and Kweli workshop alum. nadiaqahmad.com
Patricia Park is the author of the “Queens multiverse” novels: RE JANE, the award-winning retelling of JANE EYRE; and the YA novel, IMPOSTER SYNDROME & OTHER CONFESSIONS OF ALEJANDRA KIM, about a Korean Argentine American teen from Jackson Heights. Her New York Times op-ed on anti-Asian hate, “I’m Done Being Your Model Minority,” went viral. She is Assistant Professor in American University’s MFA Program.
Soniya Munshi is a writer, researcher, and educator. Her creative nonfiction and fiction projects have been encouraged by VONA, Tin House, Lambda Literary, Monson Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and their work has appeared in Scholar and Feminist Online, Feminist Formations, and Teachers and Writers. Soniya is based in Queens, the borough that raised her.
(This book cannot be returned.)
