PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT BOTH SESSIONS OF THIS WORKSHOP ARE NOW CLOSED.

Join us for the 2nd part of a two part reading and discussion group in conjunction with our current exhibition, RECREATING HOME: Photographs of the Refugee Experience.

Part One will occur Tuesday, Oct 8th at 6pm.

We will be four short stories from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2017 book of short stories The Refugees, which explores generations of Vietnamese refugees in California. During these two discussions, we will engage with the ArtRage exhibition; RECREATING HOME: Photographs of the Refugee Experience by comparing the themes in Maranie R. Staab’s photographs of Syracuse refugee population in 2019 to the themes in Nguyen’s book. These different visual and literary approaches to essential questions of place and identity will challenge us to think about how art of all kinds provides structure and shelter for those who have been forced to reexamine their relationship with the places that define them.

About the facilitators:

Jason Zencka writes and teaches in Syracuse, NY. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, a criminal defense investigator, and a high school English teacher. His story “Catacombs” opens the 2018 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Voir Dire, an opera with a libretto by Zencka, premiered in April 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Florencia Lauria is an English PhD student at Syracuse University, where she studies magical realism and its use in diasporic narratives. She has lived in Buenos Aires, Minnesota, and New York, and she holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota.

Funding for this program is provided by Humanities NY.