NEWS RELEASE                                    

For Immediate Release:  March 26, 2018

Contact: Jesse Wiedel, Communications and Marketing Assistant, 476-4118
jesse-wiedel@redwoods.edu; David Holper, CR English professor, 476-4370 david-holper@redwoods.edu

Photo: Visiting author Mia McKenzie.

College of the Redwoods presents visiting writer Mia McKenzie

College of the Redwoods will host visiting writer Mia McKenzie on Thursday, April 12 from 6-7:00 p.m. in room Humanities 129. Her talk will be followed by a Q & A and book signing.

Mia McKenzie is an award-winning writer and a smart, scrappy Philadelphian with a deep love of fake fur collars and black people. She studied writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a black feminist queer. Her stories are literary and lyrical and quirky, and have won her many awards and grants, such as the Astraea Foundation’s Writers Fund Award (‘09) and the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award (‘11).

Her debut novel, The Summer We Got Free, won the 2013 Lambda Literary Award. It has been described by author and critic Jewelle Gomez as "a brilliant tapestry filled with exuberance and anxiety." Her second book, Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender is being taught at colleges and universities across the country. You can read her essays in BGD, The Guardian, Jezebel and Ebony, and her short stories in The Kenyon Review, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and make/shift. She travels and speaks about race, queerness, gender, class, and the intersections of all of these. Read more about Mia and catch up on her latest writings at www.blackgirldangerous.com