Pen Parentis Literary Salons invites you to an exciting LIVECAST Salon featuring readings and discussion with 3 amazing writers on the timely topic of RESISTANCE!

Discussion will also include topics like life-work-balance with kids, creativity, finding inspiration ... at the

April 2022 Literary Salon

by PEN PARENTIS

...open to the general public!

Incredible authors are brought together with YOU the audience online! This livecast event will feature a lively roundtable with extraordinary Pen Parentis writers moderated by award-winning authors M. M. De Voe and Christina Chiu.

Three critically acclaimed authors. Short readings from current works, and then discussion opens up: Ask your questions about writing / publishing with kids. How do you find the time, the money, the ENERGY? How do you know you're on the right track? How do you find the mental space to think about difficult, global issues, how can you work with kids in the house? We bring you three authors who have done the hard work for you and are here to answer your questions!

Don't miss this interactive LIVECAST event. Audience participation via text is encouraged.

THE AUTHORS:

Welcome to our 2022 Spring Season! Authors Lauren Francis-Sharma, Michelle Herman, and Susanna Horng will blow you away - our theme is RESISTANCE.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of Book of the Little Axe, the 2020 American Library Association’s “Libraries Transform Book Pick” and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. Her first novel, 'Til the Well Runs Dry was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan Law School. Her more recent work can be found at Barrelhouse, ElectricLit, The Lily, as well as the anthology, Us Against Alzheimer’s. Lauren is a book reviewer for The San Francisco Chronicle, a MacDowell Fellow, serves on the board of The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College. She lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. with her husband, two teenage daughters, their dog Bailey, and a bearded dragon, Ollie.

Michelle Herman’s books include three novels, three collections of personal essays, a collection of stories and novellas, and an advice book for children. She dispenses parenting advice weekly as the Sunday Care and Feeding columnist for Slate. Her honors and awards include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the James Michener Award, the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, the Hadassah/Harold U. Ribalow Award, and many artist’s grants from the Ohio Arts Council, as well as multiple awards for teaching at Ohio State, where she co-founded the MFA program in creative writing in the early 1990s. She also founded and directs a graduate interdisciplinary program across the arts at OSU and is the executive and artistic director of an all-scholarship, in-residence summer writing program on campus for teenagers. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Sun, American Scholar, O the Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, Story, and numerous other journals. A New Yorker by birth (and temperament), born in Brighton Beach, she has lived for many years in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, the painter Glen Holland. Their daughter Grace, who grew up “resisting” her parents’ solitary art-making by becoming a theater artist, now lives in New York, where she founded a theater company and is a teaching artist focused on social justice through theater and dance.

Susanna Horng is a mom and lives with her family in NYC. Her work has been supported by a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Literature, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Fiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Catwalk Art Institute. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in Bennington Review, Minerva Rising, Global City Review, and The Rumpus. She is a clinical professor in Liberal Studies at New York University.

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Salons moderators are former Columbia School of the Arts classmates, M. M. De Voe and Christina Chiu. In addition to founding Pen Parentis, and writing the prize winning Book & Baby guide to writing while parenting, De Voe is a Pushcart-nominated author of short fiction, with work in the Shirley Jackson Award winning anthology Twisted Book of Shadows and in literary journals in Israel, Great Britain, Canada, and the US, and forthcoming in the anthology Delirium Corridors. Chiu has been Salons curator for five years. Her first novel, Beauty, was published in 2020 after winning the James Alan McPherson Award. She is one of the originators of the Asian American Writers Workshop.

Audience members are encouraged to engage with the authors and moderators during the session via chat while logged into YouTube or Facebook accounts.

For ten years this series has shattered negative stereotypes of parents in literary careers by celebrating the creative diversity of high-quality work penned by professional writers who have kids. On the second Tuesday of each month September through May, join us online! Chat with our authors, be heard! Participate in discussions with writers in real time.

Come join the fun! You don't have to be a parent or even a writer to enjoy these events - all lovers of the written word are welcome to join us!

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Interested in UNTOLD HISTORIES? Browse our featured books - through this link - on BOOKSHOP.org -- the website which allows you to easily buy from your local brick-and-mortar bookstore and magically also supports Pen Parentis! Win-win!

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Pen Parentis is a literary nonprofit that helps writers stay on creative track after starting a family. While the event is free and open to the general public, we would welcome a minimum $10 donation per attendee to cover costs. See our work and join us if you are a writer with kids: our website is penparentis.org

GRATITUDE: The 2022 year of Pen Parentis Salons are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature - This event was also funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

TONIGHT'S SPONSOR: Thanks to the de Groot Foundation!

If you have reached for a good movie or book at any time during this pandemic, thank a writer. Support the arts so they can support you.

THANK YOU TO OUR APRIL SPONSOR:

The de Groot Foundation

Click Here to find out about their new "Courage to Write Grants" of $7000.