Event

sponsored by the Creative Writing Program

The Creative Writing Program is thrilled to present new work by two fiction writers practicing at the cutting edge of their craft: Elysha Chang and Artist in Residence Abbey Mei Otis. Chang, who recently published her debut novel, A Quitter’s Paradise, piloted the Community Creative Writing workshops at Kelly Writers House and developed courses in the art of fiction for the Creative Writing Program. Otis teaches courses in science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. Her short story collection Alien Virus Love Disaster was a finalist for the Philip K Dick Award. Both writers will read, followed by a Q&A about current trends in contemporary fiction.

ELYSHA CHANG is a writer and educator based in Brooklyn. She has taught creative writing at Blue Stoop Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, and Villanova University. A graduate of Columbia’s MFA Program, she has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman. Her short works explore otherness, displaced desire, and the Asian American experience. These works have been published in Center for Fiction Magazine, Fence, GQ, The Rumpus, and others. A Quitter’s Paradise is her first novel.

ABBEY MEI OTIS is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller and a firestarter, raised in the woods of North Carolina. She loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster (Small Beer Press) was named one of the best science fiction books of the year by the Washington Post, and was a finalist for the Philip K Dick Award. She has received fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Tin House, Millay Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, Hedgebrook, and the McKnight Foundation. She studied creative writing at the Michener Center for Writers and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. At Penn she is an Artist-in-Residence, and is working on a novel of climate catastrophe and post-mass-incarceration.

For more information, visit the Kelly Writers House calendar.