UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Accomplished writer and Penn State alum Jami Nakamura Lin will offer a reading as part of this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 14, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium at University Park. The reading is free and open to the public.

Nakamura Lin’s work interrogates mythology, monstrosity, madness, and motherhood and is influenced by Japanese, Taiwanese and Okinawan folklore. She is the author of the speculative memoir, “The Night Parade” — published by Mariner Books/HarperCollins and illustrated by her sister, Cori Nakamura Lin – that was named a Best Book of 2023 by the Boston Globe and Vulture/New York Magazine and was given starred reviews by Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews.

A former Catapult essay columnist, Nakamura Lin’s work has also appeared in the New York Times, Electric Literature, Passages North, and other publications. She has received fellowships and support from the National Endowment for the Arts/Japan-US Friendship Commission, Folger Shakespeare Library, Yaddo, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, We Need Diverse Books, and the Illinois Arts Council, among others. She is a 2023 Sustainable Arts Foundation awardee, and her work was shortlisted for the 2021 Chicago Review of Books Awards.

Nakamura Lin received her master of fine arts in nonfiction from Penn State in 2013.

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries. A full list of readings in the 2024-25 series can be found here.