Dear Graduate Students, Hope this email finds you safe and healthy and taking care as best you can. FYI, *preregistration* for Spring 2021 will be taking place via email next week, *October 26-30*. We're still finalizing the schedule, but as soon as it's ready, we'll be emailing out the spring English MA course descriptions and instructions on how to register early for the classes you want. Please look out for that announcement before the end of the week. In the meantime, please review your requirements (see the *advising worksheet* attached here) and reach out to me and Hillary if you have any questions or need advising. Please also see below for an announcement from Prof. Briallen Hopper about this Wednesday's event in the Writing for the Public Speaker Series, open to CUNY/QC students. Best, Caroline & Hillary, your Directors of Graduate Studies -- Caroline Kyungah Hong Associate Professor of English Director of Graduate Studies (English MA) Queens College, CUNY *she/her/hers* * Please note that I am off email on weekends and will respond to your email during business hours, Monday–Friday 8am–5pm. At this time, there may be a delay in response time. ---------- Forwarded message --------- Anecdotal evidence suggests that academics, especially those early in their career, are more attuned than ever to the importance of reaching beyond the ivory tower and engaging with a wider public. This semester, the Writing Center is hosting a two-part speaker series featuring trained academics who write for a wider public. These events will follow an interview format and will open up to questions from the audience. The first event, featuring Scott Poulson-Bryant, will take place on *October 21 from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM*. To attend this Zoom session, you must first register here <https://gc-cuny.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrd-moqjsvE9MzXTndnzYba60nq11VLSo2> . Scott Poulson-Bryant is Assistant Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. He is a cultural historian and critic with areas of specialization in African American popular culture and Performance Studies. His teaching and research focuses on Hollywood film, black popular music, 20th and 21st century U.S. drama, genre fiction, gender and sexuality studies, and creative nonfiction writing. His research has appeared in *The Journal of Popular Music Studies, American Studies, Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, *and* Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly*, and he is currently finishing his monograph *Everybody is a Star: Cultural Citizenships and the Glamour of Blackness in 1970s US Popular Culture.* He has also published articles in *The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice*, and other publications, and he was one of the founding editors of *VIBE Magazine*. His public-facing books include *HUNG: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America *(Doubleday) and *The VIPs: A Novel *(Broadway/Random House). The interview will conducted by Briallen Hopper, who teaches a new Professional Development course at the GC, “Public Writing for Academics.” Briallen is Assistant professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of *Hard to Love *(Bloomsbury, 2019), a collection of essays about love and friendship. Her essays, reviews, op eds, profiles, listicles, and sermons have appeared in *Avidly*, *Beliefnet*, *Black Business Now*, *The Chronicle of Higher Education*, *Columbia Journal*, *The Conversation*, *Crosscurrents*, *Document Journal*, *HuffPost*, *KtB*, *Los Angeles Review of Books*, *The* *New Inquiry*, *The* *New Republic*, *Newsweek*, *New York Magazine/The Cut*, *Not Coming to a Theater Near You*, *Religion & Politics*, *Sacred Matters*, *The* *Seattle Star*, *The* *Stranger*, *Take Part*, and *Talking Points Memo*. She is the editor of the online literary magazine *KtB *and an associate editor at the UK-based independent press And Other Stories.