Creative Writing Program hosts author Tiphanie Yanique

By Annabella McDaniel

Florida State University’s English-Creative Writing Program is hosting author Tiphanie Yanique as part of the Jerome Stern Reading Series.

Yanique is both reading and participating in an author Q&A session with English Assistant Professor Ravi Howard. The reading is Tuesday, March 5, at 8 p.m. in the Conradi Theatre, located in the Williams Building. Howard will moderate the Q&A session at 3:30 p.m. in the Williams Building Common Room (Room 013).

The English department’s Diversity Committee and the FSU Office of the President are co-sponsoring the event, which is open to FSU students, faculty, and staff, and to community members.

Howard points out that, because Yanique has published short fiction, poetry, and novels, her experiences connect to a wide range of writers.

"Graduate and undergraduate students at FSU often work in multiple disciplines, so her writing and feedback can provide helpful career insights," he adds.

Yanique published her most recent novel Monster in the Middle in 2021. That book was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Townsend Prize. Her 2014 novel, Land of Love and Drowning, won the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award.

Yanique also has published a poetry collection, Wife, and her short fiction and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Review, American Short Fiction, Best African American Fiction, Best American Short Stories 2020, and more.

Her extensive collection of awards includes the Rona Jaffe Award, the Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry, the Boston Review Prize in fiction, a Pushcart Prize, and an Academy of American Poet’s Prize.

Yanique is from the Virgin Islands, and her writing often focuses on stories from the Caribbean Diaspora as well as notions of home, Howard says.

"Her work can be helpful to any student, especially those who explore the layers of cultural identity, including race, gender, queerness, and questions of migration," he says.

Yanique now lives in Atlanta with her family and teaches at Emory University.

Howard met Yanique about 15 years ago at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. English Associate Professor Skip Horack, the director of the Creative Writing Program, extended the invitation to her for this visit to FSU.

"Because I know of her outstanding writing and teaching, I was thrilled to know our students could hear her work and outlook," Howard says. "It is heartening to see the work of writers over the span of years, especially as we continue to write and teach."

Annabella McDaniel is an English major on the Editing, Writing, and Media track, with a minor in humanities.

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