Storytellers for How to Build a Fire: Borders and Boundaries
STORYTELLERS:
HILARY LEICHTER:
Hilary Leichter’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, American Short Fiction, n+1, Tin House, Electric Literature, The Atlas Review, VICE, The Kenyon Review, the Indiana Review, Paper Darts and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at NOON, and a recipient of fellowships from The Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Table 4 Writers Foundation, Columbia University, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is currently working on a novel about an auction house.
ANNA LUFT:
Anna Luft holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and specializes in stories about pubescent monsters. In her free time, she is a student at GW Law, and a law clerk at the DC office of the ACLU. She cannot wait to see what happens first: passing the bar, or finishing her novel.
MICHAEL A. YOUMANS:
Michael is a 17th street local, having lived on the block since 2001. He loves to drink coffee, complain about politics, talk sh*t on all subjects and verbally abuse anything within vocal range. He has been called arrogant, rude, inconsiderate, argumentative, tactless and worst of all, a yuppie – and this from the people who actually like him. He considers himself a simple Parkslopian.
ZAK SHERZAD:
Afghan-American born in Lausanne Switzerland, who was exiled from Afghanistan in 1978, first he became refugi in Europe. In 1986 moved to U.S. to attend Mills College, in 1989 he graduated form Center for Computer Music, with an MFA in Electronic music and Recording Media emphasis Visual Art. Zak has been a self-thought, sound maker and improviser. Zak’s work/expression is mostly based on listening and observation using the intuitive and improvisational strategies using multimedia/performance art. Zak moved in NYC in 1998, he worked as multimedia specialist at NYU, TV Center Facilities Supervisor. Presently work as Technician at BRIC. In 2000 Zak form his own Multimedia company MediaZak Inc. Zak has been playing and collaborating with William Parker, Daniel Carter, Tor Snyder, Matt Level, Joe Morris, Hamid Drake, Nublu Orchestra and many more. Zak has began to write in English at age 28 to self teach the language by trying to write short essayes and write about his intercontinental bridges biography and people that he encountered.
HOSTS:
KATE HILL CANTRILL:
Kate Hill Cantrill is the author of the short story collection, Walk Back From Monkey School, published from Press 53. She has been awarded fellowships from the Michener Center For Writers, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Jentel Artists Residency. For more than three years she curated the Rabbit Tales Reading and Performance Series in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and prior to that the Utter Reading Series in Austin, Texas.
DENNIS NORRIS:
Dennis Norris II holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. He’s won several awards and fellowships for his short fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, The NYS Summer Writers Institute and the Vermont Studio Center, and was recently named a 2015 Kimbilio Fellow. His short stories either appear, or are forthcoming in Bound Off, and Madcap Review. He is a curriculum coordinator for the Harlem Children’s Zone and a Basic Skills Instructor for Figure Skating in Harlem. He firmly believes that gossip is a writers’ unalienable right, that mimosas should not be limited to brunch, and that the two are not mutually exclusive.
