Before the pandemic, the literary salon was space for LGBTQ writers to meet, mingle and discuss writing in an informal setting. With the same goals in mind, we are hosting the salon on zoom focusing on the discussion aspect (as we sadly cannot mingle on zoom). To kick off the new year, January will be a celebration of our Jane Hoppen Residency finalists and winners. Our guests will include Temim Fruchter, Whitney Porter, Christina Quintana (CQ), and Wendy Lu.
Topic: How does one build and sustain a career as a queer writer? Feel free to bring any questions or comments you have about your own career. This salon will feature short readings from our guests followed by an open discussion.
This event is 100% FREE and OPEN to all LGBTQ writers and allies.
Temim Fruchter
Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary Jewish femme prose writer, who, after a sizeable hiatus, is thrilled to be back in Brooklyn. Her writing is deeply rooted in both her Orthodox Jewish upbringing and her insistent belief in queer possibility. Temim's fiction has been featured on NPR, and her stories and essays have appeared in Brevity, Foglifter, American Literary Review, The Account, Tupelo Quarterly, and [PANK], among others. She has work forthcoming in New South and Texas Review Press, and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Vermont Studio Center. She's working on both her first novel - a multi-generational intertextual Eastern European Jewish family story that imagines a queer ancestry - and a collection of short stories that trace the shape of the Jewish calendar year.
Whitney Porter
Whitney Porter’s work has appeared in Ping Pong Literary Magazine, Battered Suitcase, Metazen, Qwerty Magazine. And Fog Lifter. She is a 2016 Lambda Literary Fellow and is currently a staff reader for Epiphany Magazine. Originally from Houston, Texas, she now calls Brooklyn, New York her home. She holds a BA in journalism from Empire State College SUNY.
Christina Quintana (CQ)
Christina Quintana (CQ) is a writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots. She is the author of Scissoring (Dramatists Play Service) and The Heart Wants, a chapbook of poetry (Finishing Line Press). Most recently, CQ joined the third class of the Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund. The recipient of residencies and fellowships from WP Theater, MacDowell, Van Lier New Voices at the Lark, Queer/Art, Lambda Literary, and beyond, she also served as staff writer on ABC's The Baker and the Beauty.
Wendy Lu
Wendy Lu is a news editor and reporter at HuffPost covering the intersection of disability, politics and culture. She is also a global speaker on disability representation in the media. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Bustle, Quartz and more. Wendy is a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow with the Nieman Foundation, and she was named one of 30 global disability leaders on Diversability's D-30 Disability Impact List of 2020. She is based in Brooklyn, NY.