MFA Writing Colloquium: Literary Criticism for Public Audiences

From further developing one's aesthetics to paying the bills, cultural criticism has long served as a means for artists of various media to expand and support their practice. In this conversation, Omari Weekes (The New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere) and Elias Rodriques (Best American Essays, The Guardian, n+1, and elsewhere) discuss reviewing books from the inception of an idea through pitching and writing to publication. Come to this hour long conversation to learn more about reviewing.

Omari Weekes is an assistant professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. He is currently working on his first book project, Lurid Affinities: Sex and the Sprit in Contemporary Black Literature, which argues that much black writing in the post-civil rights era thinks through the dialectic between the sacred and the profane. His writing has been featured in The Black Scholar, The New York Times, n+1, The Nation, Bookforum, and other scholarly and popular venues.

Elias Rodriques: BA, Stanford University. MA, PhD, University of Pennsylvania. Special interest in African-American literature, critical prison studies, Black feminism, and Black Marxist thought. Essays published or anthologized in Best American Essays, The Guardian, The Nation, Bookforum, n+1, and other venues. First novel is All the Water I’ve Seen Is Running. His current academic book project considers representations of police violence in the African-American novel after 1945. SLC, 2021–

This event is colloquium credit eligible. Register for Zoom livestream HERE.