Please join us for the first of The Imperatives lecture series!

Leslie Fierro

Thursday, April 14

12:00pm in the Bark Orientation Room (2 W 13th Street)

Leslie’s goal as a writer is, first and foremost, to make the reader laugh. Life at the fringes of one’s immediate preoccupations can often be too dull or difficult or sad not to have the outlet of humor to plug into. L Hath No Fury (working title) is a “comic novel” that mostly parodies, somewhat satirizes, art students, the art world, multi-generational hipsterism, folk music, noise “music”, Brooklyn gentrification, the publishing industry, the comedy of aging and the tropes of the detective novel.

Leslie Fierro, sometimes known as Leslie Henkel, has a tiny “Shellback” certificate in her wallet, which is flimsy proof (literally) that she crossed the equator in a sailboat. She has yet to write anything about this alleged experience, even though she is allegedly a MFA candidate in The New School’s Creative Writing Program with a debut novel shaped up to ship out (but no, it’s not very nautical). Aside from being Mom to a feisty, uke-playing, drum-banging toddler, she works full-time at Parsons as a Program Administrator for the Fine Arts and Illustration departments. In between the cracks of hours, she messes around with a comic zine, is drafting a YA novel about a deep-sea detective (which is more nautical), and hopes to remember how to hoist a sail in the event that Trump is elected.

Organized by Niki Kriese of AMT, the staff lecture series showcases the creative practices of Parsons staff members. This year’s series looks at those reaching outside their main disciplines, forging connections with areas that may often go overlooked. There is an urgency to these conversations, one of inventing a new ways of speaking, but also racing to preserve an old language before it goes extinct. These artists often incorporate other people in their work, who may be used as subject matter, guinea pig, idea generator, but often these others can be seen as stand ins for the artists themselves. Using film screenings, visual readings, interactive performance, scientific experimentation, the artists approach their topics from different directions but share that same need to tell their story, disguised as someone else’s. 

For more information please contact kriesen@newschool.edu

Produced with assistance from the Parsons Staff Development Fund and the School of Art, Media, and Technology.