KC Trommer works for Flushing Town Hall, a performing and visual arts nonprofit located in a historic landmark building in Queens. She came to FTH in 2025 after two decades leading communi­cations for university and nonprofit insti­tutions and now focuses much of her work on connecting FTH’s programming to Queens’ diverse communities. Outside of FTH, KC is a Queens-based poet and the founder of QUEENSBOUND, a collabo­rative poetry project now in its fourth edi­tion. She is the author of We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019), winner of the Diode Editions Book Prize, and the work-in-progress, Paragones, which looks at the work and lives of female-identify­ing artists. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and lives in Jackson Heights with her son. Learn more about her creative work at kctrommer.com.

NB: Other than the amazing diversity, what do/did you love most about living in Queens (or Queens in general)? How has Queens changed over the years?

 

KCT: I like to say that we have all the food and we have all the people. Queens is my New York and to me, Queens is the beating heart of what is possible—for New York and for the United States. It’s singular. It’s complex. And it is a place that is stronger for its complexity. Diver­sity is a constant, simple talking point about the borough; I’m more interested in the intersection of cultures and stories and how we can connect with each other, and with our differences acting as an invita­tion rather than an impediment.

I love that Queens is largely an immi­grant and working-class borough. As someone from a working-class back­ground, Queens has always felt unsnobby and unsmug to me, and therefore more human and kinder than other parts of the city that seem too much in love with themselves.

I moved to Queens in 1999 and have watched it change and grow––living past 9/11 and the fall out, through COVID touching down in my neighborhood of Jackson Heights. I was glad to see us de­feat Amazon’s wholesale takeover of the borough, but the proposed Metropolitan Park Casino is a new menace that the bor­ough has to face down, along with ICE. It’s a lot for the people of this borough to weather, but in Queens, people show up for one another. I’ve seen that again and again.

NB: How does Queens inspire you? What are some of your favorite places to be inspired in Queens?

KCT: For my creative work, I have taken inspiration in our shared spaces, like the subway. I founded my project QUEENSBOUND in 2018, as part of my application for the role of Queens Poet Laureate. While I wasn’t appointed to that position, I came away from the applica­tion process with this project in mind, and it has grown since then to feature over 60 poems from poets writing about Queens. We’ve released four editions of the project and currently have an app underway that will allow subway riders to listen to poems about their neighborhoods as they ride through them.

I love the rangy-ness of Queens––the chill and the ocean you can enjoy in the Rockaways, the intensity and vibrancy of Flushing, the Manhattan-facing skyscrap­ers of LIC, the delicious and laughing cor­ners of my beloved Jackson Heights. All of the people from everywhere, here. It’s amazing. I love the unsmugness of the borough, since it’s cool without trying to be cool, and always full of surprises.

NB: What advice do you have for readers who are hoping to develop their writing or artistic practice?

KCT: I always go back to the dictum that writing is really the art of applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair. There is a delight and a horror to being a writer––the delight of something when you first write it, the horror when the editor kicks in. My first full-length collection, We Call Them Beautiful, was a finalist for over twenty prizes before it was published with Diode Editions, so I know all too well about the fact that you need to push on beyond rejection if you love making work. Publishing is a numbers game––it hinges on luck as much as talent. You have to care about your work more than any­one else.

When it comes to getting started, I love to be with other people. I love generative writing classes that keep the stakes low, doing automatic writing in groups, and I love taking art classes at the Art Students League. That helps me get out of my own way. Figure out how to get around being your own impediment (if that’s your issue! YMMV.) and then dig into that. Figuring out how to get out of my own way is most of the battle. That, and the need to pay rent.

NB: How important is personal connection and com­munication (networking?) in your industry?

KCT: QUEENSBOUND wouldn’t exist––and my life as a writer wouldn’t exist––without the network of poets I’ve come to know and trust across Queens. When I first came to Queens, I didn’t know where to find the other writers I knew must be here. I have been building relation­ships with writers, activists, and communities across the borough through this project ever since. And at Flushing Town Hall, so much of my work is about building connec­tions between the organization and the communities we serve. We’re only as good as the people we keep close.

NB: Do you have any events or projects coming up that you’d like to promote?

KCT: At FTH, we have an amazing concert coming up on August 15, the highlight of our August program­ming, Spirits from Both Sides: Arturo O’Farrill and Vin­cent Hsu. The event brings together two distinct lineages of Afro-Cuban Jazz. Six-time Grammy Award-winning pi­anist, composer, and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill will be joined by longtime collaborator, bassist and composer Vin­cent Hsu, whose award-winning music fuses Jazz and Afro-Cuban sounds with his Taiwanese roots. We’re pulling out the dance floor for this! Stay after the concert for a talk between O’Farrill and Hsu, moderated by former Executive Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Tracy Hyter-Suffern.

For my creative work, I’m currently submitting my second poetry manuscript, Paragones, which looks at the works and lives of female-identifying artists from around the globe, for publication. And I’m always working on QUEENSBOUND—we’re poised to finish what we started: a poem for each of the 120 station stops in Queens, a full literary map of the borough, and a model for every other borough in the city. We have a reading at the World’s Borough Bookshop on September 23rd, The World In One Borough, and will be sharing the QUEENSBOUND app in the spring.

—Nicollette Barsamian

The Local-Express interview series was originated on July 3, 2013 by Nicollette Barsamian.