Public Programs And Events

The First-Year Writing program at Eugene Lang College presents four of its faculty members reading original work: Jonathan Liebson, Nkosi Bandele, Olga Breydo, and Stephen Massimilla. This reading will provide insights into how individual practices of writing build on the skills and craft taught in First-Year Writing classes, and a space to celebrate one another's work. A student will introduce each faculty reader.

 Refreshments and snacks will be served! 

Jonathan Liebson is a longtime teacher of first-year writing and an academic advisor at Eugene Lang. His courses focus on short fiction, narrative or personal essays, and issues in contemporary culture. A longer description of his teaching and writing philosophy can be found on his Lang Faculty Page. His essays, book reviews, and short stories have appeared in Time Out New York, The Georgia Review, American Book Review, Meridian, Passages North, and Harvard Review; in the anthology Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (Random House); and have been performed at the InterAct Theatre Company’s Writing Aloud series, in Philadelphia. His writing (and photographs) can be found at jonathanliebson.com.

Stephen Massimilla is a poet, scholar, translator, lecturer, painter, photographer, and author. His 500-page co-authored volume Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo Press, 2016), includes hundreds of original poems, recipes, essays, and color photos. Acclaim for his other books includes an SFASU Press Prize for The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat; the Bordighera/CUNY Poetry Prize for Forty Floors from Yesterday; the Grolier Poetry Prize for Later on Aiaia; a Van Rensselaer award, selected by Kenneth Koch, and other honors. He has also translated books by Pablo Neruda and others. Massimilla has recent work in hundreds of publications from AGNI to Verse Daily. He holds an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School. He has exhibited his paintings in many cities, been interviewed on radio and television, presented papers at numerous conferences, and performed his work at venues ranging from The Natural Gourmet to Carnegie Hall.

Nkosi Ife Bandele is a storyteller who has worked as journalist and has written for stage, TV, and film. His first novel, The Ape is Dead!, has recently been published by Crimson Cloak Publishing (July 2016). He is a longtime teacher in the first-year writing program, offering the wildly popular classes Too Cool for School and What’s Love Got to do with It?. A detailed description of his teaching can be found on his Lang Faculty Page and more information about his writing is available on his Facebook fan page.

Olga Breydo received her M.Arch from The Bartlett School of Architecture in London and an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in Slice Magazine,  Joyland, The Cossack Review, Bodega, and RETRO. Her critical essay “Nabokov’s Space-Time” was longlisted for the Notting Hill Editions Prize in 2015. She teaches in the First-Year Writing program at Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts. Olga is also a staff reader for Epiphany literary journal, a co-founder of The Pushkin Academy of Russian Heritage, and a board member of Math-M-Addicts. 

 

Come celebrate an excellent year with us!