Saturday, December 1, 2012, 7pm
@ Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street (btwn Forsyth and Eldridge)
New York, NY
Creative Commons culminates in a multimedia reading featuring two writers who have been making waves with their recent works. Tania James, author of the short story collection Aerogrammes and Other Stories (2012), and Keshni Kashyap, author of the graphic novel Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary (2012), humorously explore mixed signals, missed connections, and existentialism. Accompanied by slideshows illustrating their stories, James and Kashyap will read from their new work. An audience Q&A and booksigning will follow.
Tania James was born in Chicago and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in filmmaking and received an MFA from Columbia’s School of the Arts. Her debut novel Atlas of Unknowns (Knopf 2009) was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her short story collection Aerogrammes (Knopf 2012) was selected for Oprah’s 2012 Summer Reading list and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her short stories have appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, Kenyon Review, One Story, Orion, and A Public Space. Tania is the recipient of fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. From 2011-2012, she was a Fulbright fellow to India living in New Delhi. Now she lives in Washington, D.C.
Born in Singapore and raised in California, award-winning filmmaker and author Keshni Kashyap is most recently the writer/creator of the acclaimed graphic novel Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2012). The book was placed on Entertainment Weekly’s coveted Must List and received starred trade and national reviews. It is currently being developed into a TV series. Kashyap is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley, where she studied English and Ethnic Studies. She received her MFA in Directing from UCLA and her short films have screened in over forty festivals around the world. Kashyap speaks widely and is also an occasional contributor to the Daily Beast, where she writes about gender and race. She currently lives in LA where she is working on a new book and a number of film projects.
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See the full festival line-up here. For any questions or more info, please email litfest@sawcc.org
Creative Commons is cosponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Creative Commons is made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The festival is also made possible in part by the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.