Wrexham Road Reading Series is a Writing Institute event which brings together writers from within and outside Sarah Lawrence College to share their work. Its intent is to show the breadth and depth of the literary community we're fortunate to support and be supported by. As we celebrate the inauguration of our new College president, this reading will focus on democracy and education as a theme.

Featuring:

Christina Adams is an American award-winning writer, journalist, author, and speaker. She and her work have been featured by National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, LA Times Magazine, Gulf News, Khaleej Times, Dubai One, GOOD, Open Democracy, OZY, Autism File, Global Advances in Health and Medicine, WebMD, Orange Coast Magazine, and more. Her book, A Real Boy (Berkley/Penguin), reveals the world of autism and her son’s early intervention. Her series “Autism and Beyond” airs on Autism Live. An expert on autism and camel milk, she advises families and scientists from many countries. Born in Washington, DC, Adams moved at fourteen with her family to an Appalachian farm. A former Pentagon newspaper editor, she left an aerospace career to obtain an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has been honored by various literary magazines and writing organizations. She’s given many radio and television interviews and speaks at international conferences.

A MacDowell Colony fellow, Leland Cheuk authored The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong (CCLaP, 2015), a novel, and Letters from Dinosaurs (Thought Catalog, 2016), stories. His work has been covered in VICE, The Millions, and The Rumpus, and appears or is forthcoming in Salon, Catapult, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

Sayantani DasGupta grew up hearing stories about brave princesses, bloodthirsty rakkhosh, and flying pakkhiraj horses. She is a pediatrician by training but now teaches at Columbia University. When she’s not writing or reading, Sayantani spends time watching cooking shows with her trilingual children and protecting her black labrador retriever Khushi from the many things that scare him, including plastic bags. She is a team member of We Need Diverse books and can be found on Twitter.

Melissa Faliveno is an essayist, editor, and musician who is a senior editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, and a producer/co-host of Ampersand.

Sonya Chung is the author of the The Loved Ones (Relegation Books, 2016) and Long for This World (Scribner, 2010). She is a staff writer for the The Millions and founding editor of Bloom, and is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Bronx Council on the Arts Writers’ Residency, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a Key West Literary Seminars residency. Sonya’s stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Tin House, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, Short: An International Anthology, and forthcoming in the anthology Wherever I’m With You (Seal Press), among others. Sonya has taught fiction writing at Columbia University, NYU, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and College of Mount St. Vincent. Currently she lives in New York City and teaches at Skidmore College.

This event is part of the Inaugural Year series based on the theme of Democracy and Education. Learn more about the Inaugural Year