Readers

Madeleine Lee (text needed)

Raja Promige 25, Bengali-American writer from Queens   (I'm not sure what to say here, sorry)

Lauren Cassani Davis is a writer and teacher originally from London. She is a lover of wisdom, hummingbirds, and carrot cake. She still can't decide between Joyce and Woolf.

Candace Osterhout is originally from Oklahoma and now lives in Sunnyside, NY with her fiance, Andrew. She extends her heartfelt thanks to all her friends and family who traveled here (from near and far) tonight—without them, she would not be half the person she is today.  

Her story "The Mesquite Tree" is dedicated to the mulberry tree and sand plum bushes of her childhood home in Crescent, OK. She writes in memory of Mom and Dad.

The image displayed during her reading is generously provided for free use by Jim Staley on flickr. Title: Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) tree at sunset

Morgan Ome is a Japanese and Korean American writer from California. Her work has been supported by the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House), and has appeared in The Atlantic, Electric Literature, and the Washington Post.

Hana Rivers feels lucky to have received her MFA from Brooklyn College. A 2023 Periplus fellow, her fiction and book reviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, DREGINALD, The Los Angeles Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere. This year, she served as the editor-in-chief of The Brooklyn Review.

Naomi Brauner is graduating from the Fiction MFA (in one more semester). She teaches undergraduate writing courses at Brooklyn College, and she is the fiction editor and the visual arts editor for The Brooklyn Review. The short story from this reading is unpublished, though hopefully not for long. She’d like to thank her professors and classmates for their support and endless insights!

Emilia (text needed)

Ben Kesslen is a fiction writer and freelance journalist. They loved attending Brooklyn College's MFA program!

Alex Bisker’s career has led her from Broadway to boardrooms to government bureaucracy; she’s very happy to be spending more of her time writing. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Mississippi Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fractured Lit, Stonecrop Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a Tow International Research Grant (which led her to the Isle of Rum) and was also honored to serve as Managing Editor of The Brooklyn Review this year. You can read her work at alexbisker.com.

Jever Kohli-Mariwala is a fiction writer who was raised in Mumbai and Cochin and now lives in Brooklyn. She received her B.A. from Yale College. After graduating, she worked as a paralegal at the Innocence Project, studying the impact of emerging technologies on predominantly Black and brown communities, before beginning her MFA in Fiction at Brooklyn College.

Juliette Neil is about to graduate from the Brooklyn College MFA in Fiction! She'd like to thank her family, friends, professors (Josh, Ernesto, Maddie, Julie, Helen, Anna, Monica) and her fellow graduates for their patience + wisdom.

Emily Roese (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based artist. She's received scholarships + fellowships from C.R.I.T., ART-14 @ L.a. Studio, and the Tow Foundation. You can find her work in Foglifter, Everybody Press, and The Southampton Review. She is the co-founder and co-host of The Parlor reading series.