Genesee Reading Series: Chen Chen & Catherine Faurot

Now in its 36th year, the Genesee Reading Series is a smorgasbord for your literary palate. On the second Tuesday of each month, listen to two authors read their work up close and personal in the intimate Performance Space upstairs. By the end of the year, you will have feasted on the work of 24 regional authors (some prominent, some emerging; writers of fiction, poetry, essay, creative nonfiction, memoir). Stay afterward and talk to the authors while eating cookies. $3 for members, $6 for the general public.

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. Bloodaxe Books has recently published the UK edition. Chen’s work has appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Best American Poetry, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Saltonstall Foundation. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from Texas Tech University. Currently he teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. Photo credit Mike Lovett.

Catherine Faurot’s first poetry book, Plow Harrow Seed, was published in 2006 by FootHills Publishing and her second book, Theology of the Broken, is forthcoming from Eyewear Publishing. She completed an MFA degree at Bennington College and holds an MA from Dartmouth in creative writing. Her poems have been published in The Colorado Review, Free State Review, The Christian Century, The New Orphic Review, Westchester Review and Classical Outlook, among other publications. Ms. Faurot taught creative writing at SUNY Geneseo and the Rochester Institute of Technology and currently works at the Susan B. Anthony Center at the University of Rochester.