Show Do Tell Reading Series: Mary Newell, Michelle Sierra Laffitte, Lena Valencia

The third meeting of a new literary series in which writers share and reflect upon their work. Michelle Sierra Laffitte is a Mexican-born writer, journalist and editor based in New York. Her fiction work has appeared in Joyland and Evergreen Review. Her non-fiction work has been published in magazines and outlets including Reuters.com, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, CNN, Expansión and MSNBC. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn. Lena Valencia's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in CRAFT, Joyland, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She is the managing editor of One Story and has held positions at A Public Space and BOMB Magazine. From 2014 to 2017, she hosted the HiFi Reading Series in Manhattan. She has an MFA in fiction from The New School and is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. Mary Newell lives in the lower Hudson Valley. Her chapbook, TILT/ HOVER/ VEER was recently published by Codhill Press in January 2019. Her poems were published in BlazeVox, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Spoon River Poetry Review, Entropy, Hopper Literary Magazine, Earth’s Daughters, Written River, About Place, etc. She has also written reviews and essays, including “Shades of Melancholy: Darker Moods in Dickinson’s Poetry” in Melancholia: Hinge as Innominate Limina, by Will Alexander, Heller Levinson, and Mary Newell. Dr. Newell (MA Columbia, BA Berkeley) received a doctorate from Fordham University in American Literature and the Environment. She has taught literature and writing at Fordham University, West Point, and other colleges. She has a continuing interest in spiritual and ecological resonances.