Join us for a reading and discussion of Marc Anthony Richardson’s new novel MESSIAHS with Vi Khi Nao at the Kelly Writers House.

Marc Anthony Richardson is an artist and novelist from Philadelphia. Year of the Rat, his debut novel, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, and an American Book Award. Richardson was also the recipient of a 2021 Creative Capital Award and a Sachs Program Grant for Arts Innovation, a PEN America grant, a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright fellowship, and a Vermont Studio Center residency. Messiahs, his second novel, is due for release in fall 2021. Richardson's work has appeared in Conjunctions, Callaloo, Black Warrior Review, Western Humanities Review, and the anthology, Who Will Speak for America?, from Temple University Press. He received his MFA from Mills College, and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He will be a writer-in-residence at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. www.marcanthonyrichardson.com

VI KHI NAO is the author of four poetry collections: Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019) Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), The Old Philosopher (winner of the Nightboat Prize for 2014), & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute: https://www.vikhinao.com