The 2018 Centre County Reads/CALS Community Read brought State College native Sunil Yapa home to celebrate his novel Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. This year's Centre County Reads meaningfully engaged with the novel's themes of activism, protest, and community. The events included a writing contest and a round-table event sponsored by CALS as well as an author event with Yapa himself. Details for events are posted below.

Read 2017-2018 CALS undergraduate intern Phil Chwistek's review of Yapa's novel in the Centre Daily Times here, or listen to him read it on WPSU.

Beginning of "The Art of Protest" Writing and Art Contests

How does one capture the sometimes fast-paced, sometimes patient events of protests? Can one enact protest through writing or art? Submit your best writing or art representing or enacting protest to the following categories:

Writing contest: $200 Grand Prize, additional prizes in each category (Short Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Writer under 18).

Art contest: $150 Best in Show with two $50 Awards of Merit. Selected pieces were displayed in the Betsy Rodgers Allen Gallery during the month of March.

Congratulations to the winners! Read the winning entries to the writing contest here.

Kickoff Event

February 10th, 2018 | 12 p.m.-3 p.m.
Bellefonte Historical Museum

Centre County Reads participated in hands-on community activism as area knitting clubs hosted a knit-a-thon. Knitters of all ages and experience levels worked on projects to donate to Housing Transitions, Inc.

"What is Activist Literature?" Roundtable

February 27th, 2018 | 3:30 p.m.-5 p.m.
Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library

In Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, Sunil Yapa reimagines the chaotic World Trade Organization (WTO) protests that took place in Seattle at the end of the twentieth century. Inspired by the novel’s themes of activism, protest, and community, this roundtable discussion featured four invited panelists who used the novel as a touchstone for a broader discussion centered on the question of what makes a piece of literature “activist”?

Panelists included:

• Charles Andrews, Associate Professor of English at Whitworth University (Spokane, WA) and a noted expert on peace activism and the interrelation between literature and public protest.
• PSU Distinguished Professor of Sociology John McCarthy, a leading scholar on policing of the public order, grass roots community activism, and media coverage of mass protests.
• Sarah Grossman, a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Humanities and Information (CHI) whose research centers on the  environmental humanities, globalization and industrialization, and how activist literature(s) intersects with these concerns.
• Rose Luqiu, a PhD candidate in the College of Communications who researches censorship, propaganda, and social movements in authoritarian regimes and who experienced first-hand the 1999 WTO protests that provide the backdrop for Yapa’s novel.

Following the panelists’ opening statements there was ample time for question and answer with the audience.

Two Special Events with Author Sunil Yapa

Sunil Yapa is a State College native who received his BA from Penn State and his MFA in Fiction from Hunter College in New York City in 2010, where he was a Hertog Fellow for Zadie Smith. The biracial son of a Sri Lankan father and a mother from Montana, Yapa has lived around the world, including, Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India, as well as, London, Montreal, and New York City. He currently lives in Central Pennsylvania, and teaches in low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.

A Discussion with Sunil Yapa
March 21st, 2018 | 7:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.
Freeman Auditorium, HUB

On Wednesday, March 21st from 7-8:30 PM, Sunil Yapa visited the Freeman Auditorium in the HUB to be interviewed by WPSU and then invited questions from the audience about the novel.

A Reading by Sunil Yapa
March 22nd, 2018 | 7:30 p.m.- 9 p.m.
Alumni Lounge, Nittany Lion Inn

As part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series, Yapa read from his published writing and work-in-progress at the Nittany Lion Inn.