Thursday, November 8, 2018 starting at 6 p.m.

Waiting for Yoko: A Celebration of Faculty Authors Featuring Cindi Brassington and Jonathan Andersen

The QVCC Fine Arts Department and the QVCC Cultural Programming Committee present Waiting for Yoko: A Celebration of Faculty Authors Featuring Cindi Brassington and Jonathan Andersen.  An open mic follows the featured performances. This show is the latest in the popular Waiting for Yoko Spoken Word Series.

Cindi Brassington, a professor of allied health who has taught for over two decades used her spring 2018 sabbatical leave to finish her first novel, My Perfect Family, which she recently published. Brassington has spent many summers water-skiing, hosting bonfire celebrations, and enjoying life with her husband and two daughters on Staffordville Lake in Staffordville, Connecticut, and this location became the inspiration for the fictional Lindenville Lake, where her novel is set. The polyvocal novel revolves around a mysterious murder, and one character’s struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, while also addressing the complex issues of bioethics, scarcity of resources, patient autonomy and social justice.  Brassington shared, “In my career I have found students connect to stories, both fiction and real-world, to spark their interest in science, humanities and the complexities of the world around them.”

Jonathan Andersen is the author of Augur (Red Dragonfly Press, 2018), awarded the 2017 David Martinson-Meadowhawk Poetry Prize. Other books include The Burden Note, (Meridian Prize, 2014), an English/Serbo-Croatian chapbook, and Stomp and Sing (Curbstone Press/Northwestern University Press, 2005). He is the editor of the anthology Seeds of Fire: Contemporary Poetry from the Other U.S.A. (Smokestack Books, 2008). Andersen was a high school English and special education teacher for twelve years, and since 2008 has been a professor of English at Quinebaug Valley Community College in Danielson and Willimantic, Connecticut. He and his wife, fellow writer and educator Denise Abercrombie, live in Storrs; they have two sons — Kit and Miles.