MFA’s Phoenix Kai features in Henry Art’s Gallery Speculative Fiction between Stars and Clay: Short Stories Inspired by Kelly Akashi’s Encounters

Creative Writing and Poetics MFA candidate, Phoenix Kai, along with UW, Seattle graduate students K. C. Smith, Andreas P. Bassett, and K. Meera, contributed short stories to the Henry Art Gallery’s latest interpretive guide, Speculative Fiction between Stars and Clay: Short Stories Inspired by Kelly Akashi’s Encounters. The fifth interpretive guide publication produced by the Henry, it offers diverse and imaginative perspectives on contemporary art and ideas while championing that there is not one right way to respond to art. Kae, Smith, Bassett, and Meera each read their short stories aloud during the publication’s celebration followed by a Q&A with audience members. Their conversation highlighted the generative qualities of Akashi’s artwork to produce new worlds in literary form.