The Spring 2018 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series concludes with “TRANS*forming Literature,” featuring readings and a conversation with Ryka Aoki, Helen Boyd, & Ely Shipley

Ryka Aoki is an author, composer, and teacher who was honored by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.” Ryka is a two-time Lambda Award finalist, and two of her compositions were adopted as “songs of peace” by the American Association of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors. Ryka has an MFA from Cornell University and is professor of English at Santa Monica College.

Helen Boyd is the author of My Husband Betty and She’s Not the Man I Married, books chronicling contemporary crossdressing culture, relational gender, and her own marriage to a trans woman. While she isn’t teaching, she consults on films, delivers lectures, and does training in gender diversity for corporate and community groups. Her blog (en)gender is at www.myhusbandbetty.com.

Ely Shipley is the author of Some Animal from Nightboat Books and Boy with Flowers, winner of the Barrow Street Press book prize judged by Carl Phillips and the Thom Gunn Award. His writing appears in the Seneca Review, Crazyhorse, Painted Bride Quarterly, Diagram, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. He teaches at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.

Books by Aoki, Boyd, & Shipley will be available for purchase at the reading thanks to Ithaca’s cooperative bookstore, Buffalo Street Books.

Book signing and free, catered reception in the English Lounge (258 Goldwin Smith Hall) will follow the reading.

This event is sponsored by the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English

Upcoming creative writing events:
-In A Word featuring poet Joanie Mackowski & scholar Elisha Cohn, In Conversation on May 2, 4:30 pm, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium (G70 Klarman Hall)
-MFA Graduation Reading on May 12, 3:00 pm, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium (G70 Klarman Hall)