Celebrated writer Sherman Alexie interviews three debut novelists about their work.
This event is part of the Sherman Alexie Loves Series.
This series is in partnership with novelist, poet, and playwright Sherman Alexie. He has published 25 books, including The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and War Dances. His most recent work is a children’s book called Thunder Boy Jr.
Patricia Park is the author of the novel Re Jane, named Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review, Best Books of 2015 by the American Library Association, and currently in development for a television series with Paramount and TV Land. She has written for the New York Times, Guardian, Salon, and others. She received her BA from Swarthmore and MFA from Boston University and is the recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, Sewanee, and the Center for Fiction. Starting this fall she will join American University as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. She was born and raised in New York City, where she lives now.
Ariel Schrag is a graphic artist and novelist. She is the author of the debut novel ADAM (2014) and graphic memoirs Awkward and Definition, Potential, and Likewise which chronicle her four years at Berkeley High School. Potential was nominated for an Eisner Award and Likewise was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Schrag was also a writer for Season Two of the HBO series How To Make It In America and a writer for Seasons Three and Four of the Showtime series The L Word. She has written comics and articles for the New York Times Book Review, Cosmopolitan, The New York Observer, and more. Schrag graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in English Literature. Since 2004 she has taught the course Graphic Novel Workshop in the writing department at The New School. She has also taught classes at Brown University, New York University, Butler University, Williams College, and JW3 in London. Schrag was a 2012 Radar Lab and Yaddo fellow. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Sunil Yapa is the author of his debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist (2016). He is the recipient of the 2010 Asian American Short Story Award, sponsored by Hyphen Magazine and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York, and has received scholarships to The New York State Summer Writers’ Institute, The Norman Mailer Writers’ Center in Provincetown and The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Margins, Hyphen Magazine, The Tottenville Review, Pindeldyboz: Stories that Defy Classification, and others. The biracial son of a Sri Lankan father and a mother from Montana, Yapa has lived around the world, including time living in Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India, as well as, London, Montreal, and New York City.
Selected Works:
Patricia Park
Re Jane (2015)
Ariel Schrag
ADAM (2014)
Likewise (2009)
Potential (1997)
Definition (1996)
Awkward (1995)
Sunil Yapa
Your Heart Is A Muscle the Size of Your Fist (2016)
Links
Patricia Park
Ariel Schrag
Sunil Yapa
New York Magazine Unexpected Summer Love
Trans Literature for the Masse
Park talks about her Korean American spin take on Jane Erye
