This year’s 1455 Summer Literary Festival presents “Grief, Memory, and Wonder,” a panel featuring authors Priyanka Champaneri of The City of Good Death, Jackie Polzin of Brood, and Linda Rui Feng of Swimming Back to Trout River. Priyanka’s debut novel, The City of Good Death, which won our 2018 New Immigrant Writing Prize, is out now in paperback.

When: Friday, July 15 at 4:00 pm EST
Where: Virtual / Registration required

Participants:
Priyanka Champaneri received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts numerous times. Her debut novel, The City of Good Death, won the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Jackie Polzin’s first novel, Brood, won the Sue Kaufman First Fiction Prize, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an Indie Next List selection, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Los Angeles Times Book Award, and a Minnesota Book Award. Her writing has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Literary Hub, and The Idaho Review. Polzin attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and earned an MFA from Boise State University. She currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her husband and two children.

Linda Rui Feng, born in Shanghai, has lived in San Francisco, New York, and Toronto. She is a graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities and is currently a professor of Chinese cultural history at the University of Toronto. She has been twice awarded a MacDowell Fellowship for her fiction, and her prose and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Fiddlehead, Kenyon Review Online, Santa Monica Review, and Washington Square Review. Swimming Back to Trout River is her first novel.