In partnership with PEN Center USA, ALOUD presents the culminating event of PEN’s 2016 Emerging Voices Fellowship to mark the program’s 20th anniversary. Revisit this evening of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with readings from the 2016 Fellows: Marnie Goodfriend, Jian Huang, Wendy Labinger, Natalie Lima, and Chelsea Sutton, featuring an introduction from this year’s Emerging Voices mentors: Carmiel Banasky, Claire Bidwell Smith, Patrick O’Neil, Mike Padilla, and Alicia Partnoy. The Emerging Voices Fellowship is a literary mentorship program aiming to provide new writers who are isolated from the literary establishment with the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to launch a professional writing career.
Mike Padilla is the author of the short story collection Hard Language and the novel The Girls from the Revolutionary Cantina.
Natalie Lima was born in Miami. A first-generation college student, she will begin her MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama as a McNair Graduate Fellow in the fall. Her writing has been awarded a Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA) Fellowship, and a UCLA Extension Kirkwood Literary Prize Nomination. Natalie’s fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Word Riot and Reservoir Lit. She is currently an instructor at Writopia Lab Los Angeles and is working on a short story collection titled Smash.
Claire Bidwell Smith is the author of two books of nonfiction: The Rules of Inheritance and After This: When Life is Over Where Do We Go?
Christa Parravani (representing Claire Bidwell Smith) is the author of Her: A Memoir.
Marnie Goodfriend grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, and earned a bachelor of fine arts in photography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she’s a sexual assault activist, online content writer, media consultant, and visual artist. Her writing has been published in Jezebel, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan UK. Marnie is currently working on two memoirs titled Birth Marks and Chewing Gravel.
Carmiel Banasky is the author of the novel The Suicide of Claire Bishop.
Chelsea Sutton is a fiction writer and playwright raised in Southern California. She earned her bachelor’s degree in literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Chelsea’s fiction has been published in Spectrum, Catalyst, Bourbon Penn, and other online publications. She was the winner of NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Contest in 2011, and her plays have been produced and developed across Los Angeles. Chelsea is working on a collection of short stories titled Curious Monsters.
Alicia Partnoy is the author of the novel The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, and the poetry collections Flowering Fires/Fuegos florales, Little Low Flying/Volando bajito, and Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana.
Wendy Labinger was raised in Southern California. She received a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Iowa, and her master’s in deaf education from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. She has taught English as a second language for 20 years. Wendy’s poems have been published in Potpourri and Sheila-Na-Gig. She lives in Los Angeles and is working on a collection of poems titled scatters me into the night.
Patrick O’Neil is the author of the memoir Gun, Needle, Spoon.
Jian Huang’s parents brought her to the United States from Shanghai, China, when she was six years old. She grew up in South Los Angeles and earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Southern California. She has worked for a number of social service organizations, including the LA Conservation Corps, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and Little Tokyo Service Center. Jian is working on her first memoir titled Business In The Front about the journey to the American Dream.
