January 23, 2018

SVSU Voices In The Valley event features pair of emerging writers

Two up-and-coming writers will share their stories during a reading at Saginaw Valley State University.

Su Hwang and Asiya Wadud will read from their respective works as part of SVSU's Voices In The Valley series Monday, Feb. 12, at 5 p.m. in Founders Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Wadud writes about borders, limits, and the variegated nature of truth. A member of the Belladonna Collaborative - a group of avant-garde writers first formed in New York City in 1999 - Wadud also teaches third grade in the daytime and English to both immigrants and refugees in the evening.

The Brooklyn resident's work has been supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Dickinson House, and the New York Public Library, among others. In 2017, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs published her chapbook, "we, too, are but the fold." Her first book, "crosslight for youngbird," is expected from Nightboat Books in 2018.

Hwang received the 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, the 2017 Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant from the Loft Literary Center, and the 2017 Coffee House Press In The Stacks Fellowship. She also was a recipient of the Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship in Poetry and the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize. 

An alumni of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Hwang teaches creative writing for the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop and serves as a contributing writer with Twin Cities Daily Planet, a news website focusing on the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. Born in Seoul, Hwang now resides in Minneapolis.