Queens Chamber presents "Meet the Author": an ongoing series of interviews with authors from or writing about Queens

Storm Garner was DC-born, Paris-raised, and based in New York City since working on her first La Mama, ETC theater production in 2006. She is a multi-disciplined artist—writer, filmmaker, designer, actor, musician—with a BA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from Columbia University and current student in Columbia’s Oral History Master’s Program. She created the video for the Queens Night Market’s first Kickstarter campaign and the stories included in this book are derived from her long-form interviews with participating vendors for her thesis The Queens Night Market Vendor Stories Oral History Project, which will be publicly archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. This year Storm is conducting a second round of interviews (remotely) with Queens Night Market vendors to document how they are coping with the current COVID-19 crisis. All the interviews in this multi-year project will be indexed and archived and put online for public educational purposes at the Nunn Center for Oral History and this years’ interviews will additionally be archived locally with the Queens Public Library in their Queens Memory COVID-19 Project.

John Wang was born and raised in Texas, but his love affair with night markets started during the childhood summers he spent visiting Taiwan. A graduate of Yale’s law and business school (and triple-major from the University of Michigan), John quit his high-paying M&A attorney job at a premier law firm after paying off his student loans and in 2015 pursued his dream of creating what came to be the Queens Night Market. Now in its 5th year, the popular event averages over 12,000 visitors every summer Saturday—and has welcomed over 1 million visitors since its inception. Along with his wife Storm Garner, he is co-author of the market’s cookbook The World Eats Here.

Jason D. Antos is the author of several history books whose titles include Images of America: Whitestone (2006), Images of Baseball: Shea Stadium (2007), Then & Now: Queens (2009), Then & Now: Flushing (2010), Images of America: Jackson Heights (2013), and Images of America: Corona (2015) and coming in March 22, 2021 Images of America: Douglaston & Little Neck. Mr Antos is a graduate from the University of Miami with an MFA in Communications and Journalism. He was the associate editor and head staff writer for the Queens Gazette from 2009 until 2020 and currently writes and edits for Give Me Astoria magazine. In September 2020, he became board President of the Queens Historical Society.

Tom’s career has spanned the printing and publishing industries over the past 25 years with RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Merrill Corporation and SONY DADC. For the past five years, he has been involved in the energy industry. Most recently, Tom was Director of Sales for CCI Energy Solutions, Inc.

His other interests include investing in multi-family real estate, adviser to non-profit and for-profit boards.

Originally from Astoria, Tom lives in Malverne, NY with his wife and their daughter and son. He is a graduate of the University of Scranton, Scranton, PA with a BS in Accounting and received his MBA in International Business from Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY.

He has served as President & CEO of Queens Chamber of Commerce since July of 2015.