EVENT DETAILS

UCI Author Inez Tan in Conversation with New Forum

Inez Tan will be discussing her debut fiction collection, This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone, with Amanda Hall ’21, Co-Editor-in-Chief of New Forum, UCI’s undergraduate creative writing journal.
EVENT AND RSVP: Illuminations

THE BOOK: This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone

A pair of twins tries desperately to survive their education. A sentient oyster ponders the concept of making time. An unemployed man devises a social experiment with ants. A runaway sees a vision. From the 1990’s to a future where people access information through chips implanted in their heads, from the Singaporean heartland to London, San Francisco and the moon, these stories hold in tension the strangeness of displacement and a deep yearning for connection in their relentless search for who and what to call home. A national bestseller in Singapore, where many of the stories take place!

THE AUTHOR: Inez Tan, English

Inez Tan is a fiction writer, poet, and educator based in southern California and Singapore. Her debut collection of short stories from Epigram Books (Singapore, London), This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone, was a #2 bestseller in Singapore (Straits Times). She currently teaches creative writing at the University of California, Irvine. Inez holds an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine, and an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where she was awarded a Zell Fellowship for 2015. During that year, she also served as a pedagogical mentor to graduate student instructors in creative writing. She also holds a B.A. in English with highest honors from Williams College. Inez grew up in Singapore from ages seven through fifteen, and has lived in eight different cities in the U.S. before and after. She was a 2017 Fellow of Kundiman, a national organization dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American creative writing, and has received the Academy of American Poets Award (2018), the Nora Folkenflik Award for Excellence in Poetry (2018), the Jose and Susana Encinias Award in Creative Writing (2018), first place in the Singapore Unbound Poetry Contest (2015), and an Honorable Mention for the Glimmer Train New Writers Award (2013). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Hyphen, The Rumpus, Fairy Tale Review, Zócalo Public Square, diode, Softblow, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Rupture, Foothill, Faultline, Michigan Quarterly Review, and the anthologies The Art & Craft of Stories from Asia, edited by Robin Hemley and Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, London), and A Luxury We Must Afford (Math Paper Press, Singapore).

About NEW FORUM and Co-Editor-in-Chief Amanda Hall

New Forum is an undergraduate creative writing journal. They aim to highlight the unique talents of UCI’s student community through the power of poetry, prose, and art. New Forum also encourages student engagement and creativity by hosting quarterly workshops and Open Mics. You can support the team and get updates on virtual events by following them on Instagram and Twitter. Their handles are newforum and newforumatuci respectively.

Amanda Hall is a 21-year-old poet and musician. She enjoys astrology, ube ice cream, rose milk tea, getting bullied by her friends, beautiful people with deep voices, and playing guitar until her fingers hurt. After rediscovering her bisexuality this summer, she made the executive decision to be as obnoxious about it as possible when given the opportunity.

On the other hand, this is Amanda’s fourth year at UCI. She will be completing an English major and Creative Writing minor by the Spring. At the moment, she is working with New Forum as co-Editor-in-Chief alongside her colleague, Sierra Myer. Five of her pieces have been published in two different journals. She can also be found on Instagram under the handles amxndabean and ubiemusic.

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