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MCC Daily Tribune

Spring 2025 Visiting Writer Series!

Creative Arts has a fabulous Spring 2025 line-up for our Visiting Writer Series! We're bringing CW01 alumnus Justine Alfano in February to talk with current students about their pathways beyond MCC. We're bringing nonfiction writer Melissa Febos in March. Febos's work seeks to deconstruct ideologies surrounding sex and gender, and so much else. And we're bringing playwright Seayoung Yim in April. Kim's award-winning play Jar of Fat leans into Korean mythology to ask difficult questions about female beauty and body size. More information about all three visits is below. Please email Maria Brandt (mbrandt@monroecc.edu) with any questions.

We would love to see as many MCC faculty, students, and staff as possible!

Visiting Creative Writing Alumnus, Justine Alfano:

Justine Alfano (she/her) received her AA degree in Creative Writing from Monroe Community College in 2023. As a student at MCC, Justine primarily took classes online but never ceased the opportunity to enter school literary competitions to stay involved. One of her nonfiction essays won first place for its category at MCC and went on to win a national League of Innovation Student Literary Award. In her senior year, she worked as an intern for BOA Editions, a non-profit publisher of poetry in Rochester. She is now the Director of Production at BOA and is grateful that she gets to work with young professionals and  from all walks of life. This year, Justine plans to get some of her own work published, while continuing to grow in her role at BOA. One day she hopes to write and illustrate her own graphic novel where she can marry her love for both art and writing.

Visiting Nonfiction Writer, Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos is the bestselling author of four books, including Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Her fifth book, The Dry Season, is forthcoming in May 2025 from Alfred A. Knopf. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, and New York Review of Books. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly.

Visiting Playwright, Seayoung Yim:

  • Thursday, April 3, 2025, 7 p.m., Black Box Theater, Reading and Conversation
  • Friday, April 4, 2025, 10 a.m., Black Box Theater, Interdisciplinary Theatre Workshop
  • Friday, April 4, 2025, 12 p.m., room 8-200, Playwriting Workshop

All Events are Free and Open to the Public.

Seayoung Yim is a playwright and educator from Seattle. Her play, Jar of Fat, published by Yale University Press, was the 2022 winner of the Yale Drama Series Prize. Honors include: Woolly Mammoth X Black List Playwriting Commission, Powers Playwriting Fellowship - Old Globe, 2023 Kilroys Web, Hedgebrook residency, Sewanee Writers’ Conference fellowship, Stephen Sondheim Graduate fellowship, finalist - 2024 L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award, second place - Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award (KCACTF). Her work has been supported by Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab, Clubbed Thumb, Annex Theater, Cafe Nordo, and others. MFA: Brown University. Visit Seayoung Yim's website (www.seayoungyim.com).

Maria Brandt
Creative Arts
01/14/2025