On Being a Sprinter: The Inaugural Katherine Min Fellowship Celebration – a live reading and memorial to commemorate the life and work of the author and celebrate the establishment of the Katherine Min Fellowship with writers Victoria Chang, Cathy Park Hong, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Min’s daughter, Kayla Min Andrews, at 8 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, March 30. Register to attend at the event page.
MacDowell will join the family and friends of author and educator Katherine Min (1959-2019) to celebrate her life, work, and the MacDowell Fellowship established in her name with an inaugural reading and memorial on Tuesday, March 30, at 8 p.m. EDT. The event begins with readings from poet, writer, and the first recipient of the Katherine Min Fellowship, Victoria Chang; poet, writer, and longtime friend of Min’s, Cathy Park Hong; as well as Min’s daughter, Kayla Min Andrews, who will read a selection from her mother’s work. Novelist Marie Myung-Ok Lee will lead a commemoration of Min’s life and creative legacy.
Min was in residence at MacDowell eight times between 1995 and 2013, sharing residencies with nearly 400 other creative individuals. To ensure that other Asian American writers might experience the kind of impact MacDowell had on her life and career, Min wished to create a Fellowship to support the residencies of future MacDowell Fellows for posterity. After Min died in 2019, her family and friends – in an effort led by her brother, Kollin Min – set out to celebrate her life and honor her creative legacy with the establishment of the Katherine Min Fellowship at MacDowell.
“Mom always came home from MacDowell glowing,” said Kayla Min Andrews. “She said she did her best work there, and loved getting to know the other Fellows. The Katherine Min Fellowship is an enduring way for her to give that gift to other Asian American writers.”
“MacDowell is a rare magical refuge that has enabled Katherine, myself, and others to devote ourselves fully to our work,” said Cathy Park Hong. “Her wish to guarantee this opportunity to future Asian American writers reflects the warmth and heart I knew from her friendship and mentorship. Her family’s work to establish this Fellowship memorializes her care and generosity toward writers in our community."
MacDowell Admissions Director Courtney Bethel, who met Min during one of her first residencies at MacDowell when Bethel was working in the MacDowell kitchen, will host the event. After moving to the admissions department in 2000, Bethel worked closely with Min when she took part in admissions panels for literature Fellowships.
This is a free event. All donations made to the Katherine Min Fellowship at MacDowell will support future residencies for Asian American writers. Register to attend at the event page.
Find out about all our sponsored Fellowships
Biographies of panelists:
Kayla Min Andrews is Katherine Min's daughter. She writes personal essays and short stories. She is a proud member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance. Her work has appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs and Asymptote. She can be found walking and biking around her adopted city of New Orleans.
Victoria Chang’s poetry books include OBIT, Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. OBIT was named a NYT Notable Book and a TIME best book of the year, as well as longlisted for a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. Her children’s picture book, Is Mommy?, was illustrated by Marla Frazee and published by Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster. It was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her middle grade novel, Love, Love was published by Sterling Publishing. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and the 2019 Katherine Min Fellowship from MacDowell. She lives in Los Angeles and is the Program Chair of Antioch’s low-residency MFA program.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee's novel, The Evening Hero, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster, and her young adult novel, Finding My Voice, has just be re-released by Soho Press. Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Nation, and The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and forthcoming in Smithsonian Magazine. Lee is a founder and former board president of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and teaches fiction at Columbia where she is writer in residence. She is also one of the few journalists who has been granted a visa to visit North Korea, which she did in 2004. It is the setting for The Evening Hero. She was a MacDowell Fellow in 2004.
Cathy Park Hong’s book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House (US) and Profile Books (UK). She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her prose and poetry have been published in The New York Times, New Republic, the Guardian, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor of The New Republic and is a full professor at Rutgers-Newark University. She was a MacDowell Fellow in 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2018.
Using the individual book title links above, you can purchase each from Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, NH, MacDowell’s hometown.
