New York Story Night Featuring Kanza Javed

Special New York Story Night event on Oct 20th, featuring author Kanza Javed as our special guest!

Kanza Javed is a Pakistani author with an MFA from West Virginia University, where she received the Rebecca Mason Perry Award. She is also the winner of the 2020 Reynolds Price Prize for Fiction, and her work has appeared in the American Literary Review, Punch Magazine, Salamander, and the Greensboro Review, among other publications.

Her newest book, What Remains After a Fire, (Norton) is a striking collection of short stories set in Pakistan and across the diaspora. Written with keen psychological insight and deep empathy, these stories reach across divides of class, gender, and religion to examine questions of identity, belonging, and loss. With vivid portrayals of fiercely resilient characters, Javed explores the costs of desire and the courage it takes to carve out space for oneself in circumstances that often resist change.

Kanza will take over the first hour of New York Story Night reading from her story “Stray Things Do Not Carry a Soul,” which explores addiction, patriarchy, and the darker legacies of violence passed between generations. (Trigger warning: Animal cruelty.) There will also be an open Q&A for any questions one might have on her writing and her journey as a writer.

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New York Story Night is a literary community event based in Manhattan founded to provide creative writers, amateur and professional alike, a stage on which to share their stories and an audience with which to road test their works. Consider an open mic for stand-up tragedy, stand-up horror, stand-up drama if you will. A night of bedtime stories for adults.

For those who wish to share a story, please arrive before 7pm and sign-up for a reading slot. (Find Randy or María at the front of the second floor event space.) For those who wish to be an audience, get a drink, find a favored spot, chit-chat with fellow story lovers if you like!

At 7pm, reading sign-ups close and we beginning our story night. Each writer gets 20 minutes to share their story. If the story is under the 20 mins, the remainder of the 20 minutes becomes a brief Q&A for feedback or questions with the audience. We have a 10 minute intermission at the end of every hour.

Rules for stories:
- Stories must be under 20 mins (around 3,000 words)
- All stories must be written pieces
- Stories can be fiction or non-fiction but must be narrative driven
- No poetry, no essays

We encourage you to email us at [email protected](http://[email protected]) if you have questions or concerns on if your story is a good fit for our event.

If you cannot attend this particular event but would like to be in tune with our next ones join our MeetUp group, check us out on Instagram @NewYorkStoryNight, or email us at [email protected](http://[email protected]) to be added to our e-mailing list!

New York Story Night is a free event.

*By attending, you acknowledge that you may appear in photos and videos used for social media or promotional purposes.

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