Join HerStry on March 10th at 7PM CST for a panel discussion with authors Chelsea Bieker (Godshot), Rufi Thorpe (The Knockout Queen, Girls From Corona Del Mar), and Zaina Arafat (You Exist Too Much). Panelists will discuss writing process, publishing, and being a female creative.

The panel is open to the public, but members of the Babes Who Write will be able to send questions ahead of time for the panelists.

Meet the Panelists

Credit: Carleen Coulter

Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer. Her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, has been praised by O Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Good Morning America, NPR and BBC Radio, and was selected by Roxane Gay as her favorite book of 2020. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Granta, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, VICE, BuzzFeed, Guernica and The Atlantic, and is currently working on an essay collection. She holds an MFA from Iowa and an MA from Columbia.

Chelsea Bieker is from California’s Central Valley. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award and her fiction and essays have been published in Granta, McSweeney’s, Catapult magazine, Electric Literature, and Joyland, among other publications. She was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship in 2014, and holds an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University. Godshot is her first novel.

Credit: Nina Subin

Rufi Thorpe received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. She is the author of Dear Fang, with Love and The Girls from Corona del Mar, which was long listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. A native of California, she currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and sons.