About
The Reading is a public engagement of creative writing consisting of weekly advice, and, in the future, critical essays and teaching resources.
I’ve decided to start an advice column because I believe literature not only saves lives but helps us
live them. In the past ten years, I’ve trawled through the likes of Ask Polly, Dear Sugar, and Captain Awkward, just to name a few, absorbing relationship and emotional advice when I stopped speaking to family and was in need of mentorship and support. In the same way that I searched online for how to install shelves on drywall, I looked to advice columns for a consistent voice in growing up, being surprised by extremely particular situations that still mapped a little onto my own.
About the Author:
Yanyi is a writer and critic. He is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, forthcoming 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in NPR’s All Things Considered, Tin House, Granta, and A Public Space, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. Currently, he is poetry editor at Foundry. Find out more at yanyiii.com.
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The Reading, by Yanyi