Authors of ‘AFTER’ and ‘Bodega Dreams’ to Speak

Golden is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction. Her memoirs, “Migrations of the Heart, Saving Our Sons” and “Don't Play in the Sun,” are all widely used in colleges and universities. Her novel, “AFTER,” won the fiction award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She has taught fiction and nonfiction at Virginia Commonwealth University George Mason University as well as at many writing conferences and workshops in the United States and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe. She is president emeritus and co-founder of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

Quiñonez is the author of the novels, “Chango’s Fire,” and “Bodega Dreams.” Heralded by the Village Voice as a “writer on the verge,” Quiñonez’s debut novel, “Bodega Dreams,” has received critical acclaim and has become a landmark in contemporary literature, as well as required reading in many high schools and community colleges around the country. The New York Times chose it as a “New Immigrant Classic.” Quiñonez has received fellowships from the Wesleyan Writers Conference, the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and from the Sundance Screenwriters Lab in Sundance, Utah. His second novel, “Chango’s Fire” (HarperCollins), was well received. Currently, he is an assistant professor at Cornell University’s M.F.A. program in creative writing.

This event is sponsored by The North Country Institute for Writers of Color, the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College in collaboration with the English Department at SUNY Plattsburgh and the Paden Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color. This event is part of the activities scheduled in association with the institute’s summer retreat that will be held from July 6 to 10 at the Valcour Conference and Educational Center in Peru. The purpose of the retreat is to provide a writing community in the North Country where established and emerging writers of color can focus on their writing and create cross-cultural conversations around the literatures of people of color.

The event is free and open to the public.