PANEL DISCUSSION: Heather Abel, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, and Ariel Schrag
b'Where is all of the literary love for Queens? It\\u2019s right here at\\xa0LIC Reading Series. Join them each week for stories, readings, and discussions with acclaimed writers, recorded with a live audience in the cozy carriage house of a classic pub in Long Island City, Queens, New York, and hosted by founder Catherine LaSota.\\nThis week, the podcast features the reading and panel discussion from the LIC Reading Series event on November 13, 2018, with Heather Abel (The Optimistic Decade), Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond (Powder Necklace), and Ariel Schrag. \\nAbout the Readers:\\nHeather Abel\\u2019s debut novel,\\xa0The Optimistic Decade, was published in May 2018. Her writing has appeared in the\\xa0New York Times, Slate, the\\xa0Los Angeles Times, and the online\\xa0Paris Review, among other places. She worked as a reporter and editor for the\\xa0San Francisco Bay Guardian\\xa0and\\xa0High Country News, during which time she talked to gold miners, fossil hounds, Native American environmental activists, and really bored teens in rural Utah. She received an MFA in fiction writing from the New School University, and she\\u2019s taught writing at the New School, UMass Amherst, and Smith College. Raised in Santa Monica, she now lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband and two daughters, and she dreams of the Colorado high desert.\\n\\ufeffNana Ekua Brew-Hammond\\xa0has written for AOL,\\xa0Parenting Magazine, the\\xa0Village Voice,\\xa0Metro, and\\xa0Trace Magazine. Her short story \\u201cBush Girl\\u201d was published in the May 2008 issues of\\xa0African Writing\\xa0and her poem, \\u201cThe Whinings of a Seven Sister Cum Laude Graduate Working Board as an Assistant,\\u201d was published in 2006\\u2019s\\xa0Growing up Girl Anthology. A cum laude graduate of Vassar College, she attended secondary school in Ghana.\\xa0Powder Necklace\\xa0is loosely based on the experience.\\nAriel Schrag\\xa0was born in Berkeley, California. She is the author of the novel\\xa0Adam, and the graphic memoirs\\xa0Awkward,\\xa0Definition,\\xa0Potential,\\xa0Likewise, and\\xa0Part of It.\\xa0Potential\\xa0was nominated for an Eisner Award and Likewise was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Schrag was a writer for the USA series\\xa0Dare Me, based on the Megan Abbott novel, the HBO series\\xa0Vinyl\\xa0and\\xa0How To Make It In America, and for the Showtime series\\xa0The L Word. She has written comics and articles for\\xa0The New York Times Book Review,\\xa0Cosmopolitan,\\xa0New York\\xa0magazine,\\xa0USA Today, and more. Her original art has showed in galleries across North America and Europe. Schrag graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature. She teaches the course Graphic Novel Workshop in the writing department at The New School and has also taught classes at Brown University, New York University, Butler University, and Williams College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.\\n*\\nThis event was made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'