VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
MORSHED: During residencies in my MFA program, we would have student readings. I participated in some but not all. After one such reading, a classmate came up to me and said that he liked my story. “I didn’t read last night,” I told him. “Didn’t you read some kind of scene about pho?” I knew exactly what he was talking about. Although I didn’t read, I was at the reading. Another classmate (who is also of Asian origin) read a sex scene that involved pho. I’m guessing since I am Vietnamese, some in the audience got us mixed up. I was a bit horrified — not because of the quality of the writing or the content, but because I write nonfiction, and I didn’t want my classmates thinking that scene was based on any kind of experience that I’d had.
Maggie Thach Morshed is a former award-winning sports journalist. She has an MFA from UC Riverside, Palm Desert. She is currently at work on a memoir about living and teaching in South Korea. Much of her writing revolves around the themes of immigration, identity and assimilation. Most recently, she was involved with the PeaceMakers program at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice, where she was a Peace Writer for South Africa’s Glenda Wildschut. Her narrative appears on the Atavist. Her essays have appeared in Full Grown People, Catapult, Sport Literate and others. Oh, and she just got married.
Come see Maggie read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Thursday, June 9 at 7:30pm.