{"id":314990,"date":"2026-08-06T06:08:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T06:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/314990\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T06:08:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T06:08:31","slug":"local-express-kc-trommer-queens-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/314990\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Express: KC Trommer – Queens Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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 communi\u00adcations for university and nonprofit insti\u00adtutions and now focuses much of her work on connecting FTH\u2019s programming to Queens\u2019 diverse communities. Outside of FTH, KC is a Queens-based poet and the founder of QUEENSBOUND, a collabo\u00adrative poetry project now in its fourth edi\u00adtion. 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-identify\u00ading 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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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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\u2014for New York and for the United States. It\u2019s singular. It\u2019s complex. And it is a place that is stronger for its complexity. Diver\u00adsity is a constant, simple talking point about the borough; I\u2019m more interested in the intersection of cultures and stories and how we can connect with each other, and with our differences acting as an invita\u00adtion rather than an impediment.<\/p>\n

I love that Queens is largely an immi\u00adgrant and working-class borough. As someone from a working-class back\u00adground, 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.<\/p>\n

I moved to Queens in 1999 and have watched it change and grow\u2013\u2013living past 9\/11 and the fall out, through COVID touching down in my neighborhood of Jackson Heights. I was glad to see us de\u00adfeat Amazon\u2019s wholesale takeover of the borough, but the proposed Metropolitan Park Casino is a new menace that the bor\u00adough has to face down, along with ICE. It\u2019s a lot for the people of this borough to weather, but in Queens, people show up for one another. I\u2019ve seen that again and again.<\/p>\n

NB: How does Queens inspire you? What are some of your favorite places to be inspired in Queens?<\/p>\n

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\u2019t appointed to that position, I came away from the applica\u00adtion process with this project in mind, and it has grown since then to feature over 60 poems from poets writing about Queens. We\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

I love the rangy-ness of Queens\u2013\u2013the chill and the ocean you can enjoy in the Rockaways, the intensity and vibrancy of Flushing, the Manhattan-facing skyscrap\u00aders of LIC, the delicious and laughing cor\u00adners of my beloved Jackson Heights. All of the people from everywhere, here. It\u2019s amazing. I love the unsmugness of the borough, since it\u2019s cool without trying to be cool, and always full of surprises.<\/p>\n

NB: What advice do you have for readers who are hoping to develop their writing or artistic practice?<\/p>\n

KCT: I always go back to the dictum that writing is really the art of applying the seat of one\u2019s pants to the seat of one\u2019s chair. There is a delight and a horror to being a writer\u2013\u2013the 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\u2013\u2013it hinges on luck as much as talent. You have to care about your work more than any\u00adone else.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

NB: How important is personal connection and com\u00admunication (networking?) in your industry?<\/p>\n

KCT: QUEENSBOUND wouldn\u2019t exist\u2013\u2013and my life as a writer wouldn\u2019t exist\u2013\u2013without the network of poets I\u2019ve come to know and trust across Queens. When I first came to Queens, I didn\u2019t know where to find the other writers I knew must be here. I have been building relation\u00adships 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 connec\u00adtions between the organization and the communities we serve. We\u2019re only as good as the people we keep close.<\/p>\n

NB: Do you have any events or projects coming up that you\u2019d like to promote?<\/p>\n

KCT: At FTH, we have an amazing concert coming up on August 15, the highlight of our August program\u00adming, Spirits from Both Sides: Arturo O\u2019Farrill and Vin\u00adcent Hsu. The event brings together two distinct lineages of Afro-Cuban Jazz. Six-time Grammy Award-winning pi\u00adanist, composer, and bandleader Arturo O\u2019Farrill will be joined by longtime collaborator, bassist and composer Vin\u00adcent Hsu, whose award-winning music fuses Jazz and Afro-Cuban sounds with his Taiwanese roots. We\u2019re pulling out the dance floor for this! Stay after the concert for a talk between O\u2019Farrill and Hsu, moderated by former Executive Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Tracy Hyter-Suffern.<\/p>\n

For my creative work, I\u2019m 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\u2019m always working on QUEENSBOUND\u2014we\u2019re 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\u2019s Borough Bookshop on September 23rd, The World In One Borough, and will be sharing the QUEENSBOUND app in the spring.<\/p>\n

\u2014Nicollette Barsamian<\/p>\n

The Local-Express interview series was originated on July 3, 2013 by Nicollette Barsamian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KC Trommer works for Flushing Town Hall, a performing and visual arts nonprofit located in a historic landmark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-314990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}