CONWAY, Ark. (September 13, 2023)-Hendrix-Murphy Visiting Writer K-Ming Chang will read and discuss her work on Thursday, October 19, at 7:30 p.m. in Reves Recital Hall on Hendrix College campus. A reception and book signing in Trieschmann Gallery will follow the reading, and WordsWorth Books of Little Rock will sell select titles of Chang’s work. This event is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are required.
Chang is a poet, novelist, and short story writer who, at age 25, has already been named a Kundiman Fellow, a Lambda Literary Award Winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and an O. Henry Prize Winner. The Rumpus calls her “a beacon of Gen Z excellence,” while noting that her work has “achieved excellence that transcends generational divides.”
Chang’s most recent book Gods of Want was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2022 and won the 2023 Lammy Award for Lesbian Fiction. The Los Angeles Times called the short story collection a “Taiwanese Californian’s mythical-realist tales of displacement and queer desire” and applauded Chang for her “special talent for forging history into myth and myth into present-day fiction.”
Chang’s debut novel Bestiary was longlisted for the Center of Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. It was written during the summer of her sophomore year of college and sold to One World (Penguin Random House) while she was still an undergraduate.
She has taught classes at numerous writers’ retreats and creative writing programs, including Kundiman, Catapult, Lambda Literary Writers’ Retreat, Miami Book Fair, and Pacific Northwest College of the Arts, among others.
Chang’s other publications include the chapbook Bone House, a queer and Taiwanese-American retelling of Wuthering Heights, and the poetry collection Past Lives, Future Bodies. Her forthcoming works are the novel Organ Meats, to be published this October, and the novella Cecilia. Advanced copies of Organ Meats will be sold at the public reading.
This event is sponsored by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language, which are designed to enhance and enrich the study and teaching of literature and language at Hendrix College. For more information about this and future events, please contact Julia Lee McGill at McGill@hendrix.edu.