Daniel Tam-Claiborne with Nonfiction for No Reason

Daniel Tam-Claiborne, author and contributor to the newly released Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears, and Katie Ellison, writer and host of the Nonfiction for No Reason series, host a dynamic night of nonfiction readings. Tonight's lineup includes Katie Ellison, Daniel Tam-Claiborne, Frances Dinger, Vincent Rendoni, Jessica Mooney, Yitka Winn, and Kristen Millares Young. Sad Happens, edited by Brandon Stosuy and illustrated by Rose Lazar, is a collective, multi-faceted archive of tears that captures the complexity and variety of these circumstances. We hear from Mike Birbiglia on the role that grief and pain have in comedy; Jia Tolentino on how motherhood made her cry in both hormonal joy and fervent rage; and Hanif Abdurraqib on the intimacy of crying on planes. We hear from Phoebe Bridgers on poignant moments of departure and JP Brammer on the strange disappointments of success; Matt Berninger on becoming a crybaby in his adulthood and Hua Hsu on crying during a moment of public uncertainty. We also hear from everyday people in a range of professions: an actor on the tips she learned from drag queens about preserving a full face of makeup while crying; a zookeeper on mourning the animals who have died during her tenure; a bartender on crying in the walk-in; and a TV critic on the shows that have moved her. Brimming with humanity, this anthology is confirmation that sad happens—but so does joy, love, a sense of community, and a host of other emotions. By turns moving and affirming, Sad Happens is an emotional balm and visual delight. Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial essayist, multimedia producer, and author of the short story collection What Never Leaves. His writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, he has also received support from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Kundiman, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, and others. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and his debut novel-in-progress, Transplants, was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Katie Lee Ellison is the creator, curator, and host of Nonfiction for No Reason. You can find her writing in Shenandoah, Moss, The Seventh Wave, J Journal, and more at katieleeellison.com. She’s a 2016-2017 Hugo House Fellow, a 2018 fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and a 2020 Tin House Summer Workshop attendee. Get updates on NFNR and other good news @katie_lee_e on Instagram. Kristen Millares Young is a journalist, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by the Paris Review and called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post, “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times, and “utterly unique and important” by Ms. Magazine. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and named a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year in 2020. Her essays, book reviews, and investigations appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, and the anthologies Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders, and Alone Together, winner of a 2021 Washington State Book Award. A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she is the editor of Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature, a finalist for a 2021 Washington State Book Award. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. She is the 2023 Distinguished Visiting Writer for Seattle University and the University of Washington Bothell Master of Fine Arts program. Vincent Antonio Rendoni is the author of A Grito Contest in the Afterlife, which was the winner of the 2022 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets as selected by Dorianne Laux. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions multiple times and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Pleiades, The Sycamore Review, The Vestal Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Jessica Mooney is a Seattle-based writer who works in global health. Her short stories, literary criticism, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Seventh Wave, Entropy, Seattle Magazine, The Rumpus, Salon, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook, Parting Gifts for Losing Contestants, a collection of essays on grief published by COAST|noCOAST.

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Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2092162-0

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