The 4th Annual Katherine Min Fellowship Celebration
Celebrating the Paperback Launch of The Fetishist featuring 2024 Katherine Min Fellow Mary H.K. Choi, Kayla Min Andrews, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Tuesday, January 21
6 - 7:30 PM
Octavia Books
513 Octavia Street
New Orleans, LA 70115
Join MacDowell at Octavia Books in New Orleans for a celebration of the paperback launch The Fetishist, the posthumously published second novel by MacDowell Fellow Katherine Min and our fourth annual commemoration of Min's legacy and the Katherine Min Fellowship endowed at MacDowell in her honor.
The evening will feature an introduction by MacDowell, a reading from author, journalist, and 2024 Katherine Min Fellow Mary H.K. Choi, and a conversation between author and Katherine's daughter Kayla Min Andrews and Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Advance registration is free and highly encouraged; please RSVP using the form below.
You can purchase The Fetishist in paperback from our event host, Octavia Books, for in-store pickup or shipping nationwide.
Katherine Min (Joanna Eldredge Morrissey photo), Mary H.K. Choi (Aaron Richter photo), Kayla Min Andrews, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Katherine Min at Schelling Studio in 2001, photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey
Katherine Min at Champman Studio in 2004 (Joanna Eldredge Morrissey photo)
Katherine Min at Sorosis Studio in 1995 (Joanna Eldredge Morrissey photo)
Katherine Min at Sorosis Studio in 1995 (Joanna Eldredge Morrissey photo)
About Katherine
Katherine Min, a writer and educator, held eight residencies at MacDowell between 1995 and 2013. During her 2001 residency, she finished the first draft of her novel Secondhand World, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize. Along with the uninterrupted time to write, Katherine loved MacDowell for its picnic basket lunches, friendly pool games, late-night dance parties, and the opportunity to meet and share work with other artists. She cherished the lifelong friendships she made at MacDowell and was a beloved member of the MacDowell community.
In honor of the life and legacy of Katherine Min, her family and friends established the Katherine Min Fellowship for Asian American writers at MacDowell. This permanently endowed fellowship will allow MacDowell to continue to elevate Asian American voices and to strengthen relationships within the Asian American writers community.
A "house" of one's own to work with out interruptions or distraction. Peace, Quiet. Yes, MacDowell is inspiring and soul-feeding. It grounds me in the work like nothing else can, allows me to "inhabit" it fully, and this carries over into the future, always.
- Katherine Min on MacDowell, 2004
Program Participants
Kayla Min Andrews is Katherine Min's daughter. She lives in New Orleans where she teaches English to international students and is a member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance. She has been published in Asymptote (literary translation) and Halfway Down the Stairs (creative nonfiction). Her flash essay "Old Kleenex" was nominated for a Best of the Net 2020. Kayla is working on a collection of autobiographical short stories.
Mary H.K. Choi (24) is the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, Permanent Record and Yolk. She lives in New York and is currently developing her books for film and TV.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of The American Daughters, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was longlisted for the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and We Cast a Shadow, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and International Dublin Literary Award. A recipient of an Iowa Review Award in fiction, he has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, the Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. A native of New Orleans, he is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and a professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University.