by Gita Passi~

On Tuesday, November 8, I attended my second live reading of the semester, from contemporary NYT best-selling novelist Stephen Graham Jones, presented by the Penn State English Department Creative Writing Program as part of the Rolling Reading Series.

Jones opened with a lighthearted anecdote recalling his first experience with emails in the early 90s, some of which were to his professor, Bill Cobb (Director of Creative Writing), who had warmly introduced his former student from the podium a few moments prior. Shortly after, Jones began the first reading of the night, a short horror story entitled “Love is a Cavity I Can’t Stop Touching,” which tells of two young lovers who bind themselves for life by scooping out and consuming pieces of each other’s thigh muscles. This piece set the tone for the rest of the night’s offerings, which were packed with incredible imagery, albeit vividly disturbing and graphic. It was impossible not to be on the edge of your seat, and I found myself squinting and flinching at certain lines as I clung to each story with the rest of the audience.

Jones balanced the heaviness of his writing with quips and jokes throughout the event, warranting chuckles and exhales of built-up tension from around the room.

After the second reading about a truck driver, Jones explained that flash fiction is his favorite genre to write in, as the pressure and compression forces the author to become innovative and fit a novel’s worth of work in less than 1000 words. The second-to-last reading, “Can You See the Indian,” was the first nonfiction and first-person reading of the night. Jones humorously described nonfiction writing as “fiction, with less lies.” The last reading took the form of a numbered list, which demonstrated its purpose by allowing Jones to disregard transitions, since, as he described, “the numbers just follow each other.”

The event ended with a Q&A session, where audience members asked questions ranging from advice on how to start stories of their own, to Jones’ thoughts on classic horror films in relation to his own writing. In response to a question about working with comic artists on works like “Earthdivers,” Jones explained the process of viewing various samples of artwork provided by his publicist to find the perfect match for his narrative–Italian artist Davide Gianfelice. The ongoing comic book series “unites four Indigenous survivors in an apocalyptic near future as they embark on a bloody, one-way mission to save the world by traveling back in time to kill Christopher Columbus and prevent the creation of America.”

More information about Stephen Graham Jones, his works, and upcoming live events can be viewed on his website.

Gita Passi is a Penn State student majoring in Digital Arts and Media Design with a Photography minor. She is currently enrolled in ENGL 50: Intro to Creative Writing, where she was introduced to Stephen Graham Jones’ work. During the fiction unit, the class read two short stories–“Moonboys” and “Bad Code“–both published in Lightspeed, an online magazine of science fiction and fantasy.

by Gita Passi~

On Thursday October 13th, I attended a live hour-long presentation and reading from contemporary novelist and essayist Xu Xi, presented by the Penn State English Department Creative Writing Program as part of the Rolling Reading Series.

Before the presentation began, Xi displayed an image of Hong Kong as it was when she lived there as a child. She opened by speaking about the changes that the city has gone through since then, and more recent changes within the past two years. The audience viewed images of her 1950’s childhood apartment in Tsim Sha Tsui (TST,) and observed how the area has been modernized over time.

She tied this precursor to the first reading of the evening, “When Your City Vanishes,” which is a collection of creative nonfiction readings about Hong Kong’s past and future. Following this, she read an excerpt from her Hong Kong fiction work “Lightning,” which was about a grandmother’s reaction to her granddaughter’s blossoming love life in relation to her own romantic experiences.

The evening was concluded with a Q&A session where audience members asked a variety of questions, ranging from the languages Xi speaks as a transnational writer, to the advice about being a writer while also having a day job.

Xi provided tips in response to a question about how to deal with the unreliability of memory and its relationship with imagination in nonfiction writing, specifically regarding her work Dear Hong Kong. Xi explained that fact checking memories from childhood with family members and lifelong friends would fill in significant gaps; she recalled her second sister keeping photos of her parents, and her rebellious Aunt Pristine who provided information about Indonesian life and Xi’s mother’s family.

Another student sought advice on how to avoid slipping away from the present moment when writing about the past in creative nonfiction. Xi suggested finding a voice of experience and innocence and braiding them together. She explained that it was important to ask ourselves why we remember some memories, but not others. Memories that we remember clearly are usually related to something happening in our present-day life; this is where we can draw and maintain a connection to the present while discussing the past.

More information about Xu Xi, her works, and upcoming live events can be viewed on her website.

Gita Passi is a Penn State student majoring in Digital Arts and Media Design with a Photography minor. She is currently enrolled in ENGL 50: Intro to Creative Writing, where she was introduced to Xu Xi’s work. During the creative nonfiction unit, the class read an excerpt from “Interruptions” (2016), a collection of essays in response to images by photographer David Clarke.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Novelist Stephen Graham Jones will offer a reading at Penn State as part of this year’s Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which will take place at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 8th, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus, will be free and open to the public. 

Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of nearly thirty novels, novellas, collections, and comic books. His doctoral dissertation at Florida State University later became his debut novel “The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong” (2000) and was praised by Native American Renaissance writer and scholar Gerald Vizenor. Many of his works reside in horror, science fiction, and experimental fiction genres and have received literary acclaim. His popular and recent works include the novels “The Only Good Indians” (2020), described by The New York Times as “gritty and gorgeous,” and “My Heart is a Chainsaw,” Book 1 in The Indian Lake Trilogy (2021), Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. The Indian Lake Trilogy Book 2, “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” is set to be released in February 2023.   

Jones’ lifelong admiration for horror movies, and his inspiration at first viewing “Scream” in 1996, is distinctly reflected in his work. His novel “My Heart Is a Chainsaw” was described by novelist Alma Katsu as “an homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” National Book Award winner and author Tananarive Due described Jones as “a literary master who happens to write horror,” noting “you’ve never read a book quite like ‘The Only Good Indians.’”  

Jones’ many awards include an NEA grant, the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, four Bram Stoker Awards, two Shirley Jackson Awards, and five This is Horror Awards. Jones resides in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, children, and dogs. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado and is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.  

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Novelist and essayist Xu Xi will offer a reading at Penn State as part of this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium.

Xu is a former Indonesian national of Chinese descent from Hong Kong who became a U.S. national at the age of 33. An author of 15 books — five novels, nine collections of fiction and essays, and one memoir — she is considered one of Hong Kong’s leading writers in English. She also edited five anthologies of Asian and Hong Kong writing. Recent titles include “The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology” (Bloomsbury, 2021); “This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being” (Nebraska 2019); “Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories” (Signal 8, 2018); “Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City” (Penguin, 2017); and the novel “That Man in Our Lives” (C&R, 2016).

Xu’s latest new collection, “Monkey in Residence & Other Speculations” (Signal 8 Press), is scheduled to be released in November 2022. Writer Antony Dapiran characterizes the forthcoming collection as “‘speculations’ [that] weave between fact and fiction, from personal essay to short story, memoir to satire, as elusive and allusive as her playful, slippery sentences.”

About Xu’s most recent essay collection, “This Fish is Fowl,” writer Robin Hemley observes: “To read these smart, inventive, and always surprising essays is to be given a passport to a transnational perspective the world sorely needs at this moment. Xu Xi’s sense of identity: Indonesian/Chinese/American/Hong Kong is not mixed up (though she likes to label herself a ‘mongrel’), but expansive. Identity for her has almost nothing to do with borders but with a kind of echolocation — sending forth her speculations on what it means to be a traveler, a daughter, a life partner, a woman in order to determine a shifting but remarkable path through geographies of being.”

Xu currently holds the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross and is a founding partner of Authors at Large Inc. She previously co-directed the international master of fine arts in creative writing and literary translation in prose program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she was writer-in-residence at City University of Hong Kong, where she established the first low-residency MFA in creative writing in Asia.

A diehard transnational, Xu long inhabited the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand. Prior to 1998, she had an 18-year corporate career in marketing and management and held positions at several multinationals in the U.S. and Asia, including The Asian Wall Street Journal, Leo Burnett Advertising, Federal Express, Pinkerton’s and Cathay Pacific Airways. She now splits her life between the state of New York and the rest of the world.

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, and University Libraries.