A Reading With: Meghan Gilliss and Jennifer Quartararo
Join us for a literary event celebrating the recent book releases of Lungfish from Meghan Gilliss and An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value by Jennifer Quartararo.
The evening will begin with readings from each author, and be followed by a panel conversation moderated by MWPA’s Gibson Fay LeBlanc.
More about the authors:
Jennifer Quartararo:
Jennifer is a Detroit-based writer and holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Northern Michigan University. Her essays have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Quarter After Eight, saltfront, Hobart, COVEN Berlin, and After Happy Hour Review – among others. Her debut book of creative nonfiction, An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value, is out now from PANK Books. She was long listed in the 2020 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards and was a semi-finalist in the 2019 Pleiades Press Short Prose Book Contest. She’s taught creative writing to kids in Detroit Public Schools through the organization InsideOut Literary Arts as well as to kids in the juvenile detention system through Youth Arts Alliance. In the winter of 2021 she was a resident at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation in Rockland, ME.
and from Meghan Gilliss:
Hi. I was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, moved around a bit (California, Missouri), and now live in Portland, Maine, with my woodworking/ artist husband Adam Stockman, and our daughter.
LUNGFISH is my first novel. I also write short fiction, which has appeared in great places like Salamander, Nat. Brut, fields, New Letters, The Rattling Wall, and North by Northeast: New short fiction by Writers from Maine and New England.
I first studied studio art, then (when I couldn’t gain control of my paints) photojournalism, then (when my darkroom skills quickly became laughably senseless and I distrusted my authoritative perception of the world anyhow) attended the Bennington Writing Seminars, where I studied fiction.
I’m interested in the ways non-traditional voices are entering the literary landscape—how real constraints and the necessary contortions inform practice and ultimately change the literature being written. I’m interested, especially, in the rise of the voice of mothers.
I’ve had the honor of being a resident at the Hewnoaks Artist Colony.
I’ve been, among other things, a journalist, a bookstore owner, and an outreach librarian. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve worked answering call bells and telephones at the local hospital.
