Campus organization Writers@Drew held a panel on queer literature this past Wednesday, Feb. 19 in Mead Hall’s Founders Room. The event was cosponsored by the Casement Fund, the English department and the Women’s & Gender Studies department.
Event organizers invited three well-known queer authors – Temim Fruchter, Isle McElroy and Megan Fernandes – to read passages from their writing aloud to the audience, as well as to answer questions from those in attendance after.
Inside the foyer were placed a check-in table where those in attendance could scan their Drew IDs and another table with the panelists’ various published novels and books. Staff at the check-in desk also distributed pamphlets to promote Drew’s “LAUNCH Your Major” event on Monday, Feb. 24.
After reading aloud passages from their respective books, the event organizers opened the floor for questions and talked about how they developed their characters as well as their thought processes when writing scenes. McElroy commented on how they felt that queer-focused writing was becoming much more “abstract,” and that they strongly consider their vision in writing their plot and developing their characters more than “foregrounding [their] identity.”
The panel ran until about 5 p.m., and the speakers’ books on the other table were available for purchase by anyone who so desired after the event as those in attendance were exiting Mead Hall.
According to the Path, Fruchter is a “queer, nonbinary anti-Zionist Jewish writer” who holds a master’s degree in fiction from the University of Maryland. She has also received fellowships from numerous arts organizations, such as the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Vermont Studio Center.
Fruchter cohosts a reading series in Brooklyn called Pete’s Reading Series, and is the author of the novel “CITY OF LAUGHTER” (a passage from which she read at the event.)
McElroy is another novelist whose work has been featured in publications like The Atlantic and Tin House. Their first novel, “The Atmospherians,” was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and their second novel (“People Collide”) was similarly critically acclaimed. Their writing also appears in The Guardian and GQ.
Fernandes is a South Asian American New York City writer and professor who has been published in numerous compilations and poetry reviews. Her third poetry book, “I Do Everything I’m Told,” has been featured in the Boston Globe and Time Magazine. Fernandes also teaches as an associate professor of English as well as the Writer-in-Residence of Lafayette College. She teaches poetry, creative nonfiction and critical theory.
Sabr Keres-Siddiqui is a sophomore majoring in sociology and minoring in journalism/journalism advocacy.
