George Abraham, Will Nu’utupu Giles, Franny Choi, F. Douglas Brown, and Ansley Moon.

For our 15th anniversary, LitHub featured 15 Kundiman writers in "The Newest Wave of Asian American Writers You Should Know."

The feature begins:

"Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi were sitting in a hammock at a big, Filipino family gathering. Surrounded by food, love, and comradery, the two friends came to a realization: We need this in our literary lives. Right then and there, they agreed that Asian American writers needed a place to find family—and they were going to create that space.

That was 15 years ago. Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) poetry and fiction barely registered on the literary radar. There were just a handful of writers celebrated (and often tokenized) in the literary world—and most were East Asian and straight. Meanwhile new APIA writers struggled to find mentors and connect with each other in predominantly white MFA and English programs.

While Gambito and Legaspi may not have necessarily set out to alter the literary landscape by creating Kundiman, that’s exactly they did."

Thank you to Tamiko Beyer for sharing the story of Kundiman's founding, history, mission, and 15 years of generosity, inclusion, and courage.

The full article, which includes spotlights of 15 of our luminous fellows, is available here, and the fellows featured are listed below:

George Abraham, whose newest chapbook, The Specimen's Apology, releases January 11, 2019
Fatimah Asghar, whose debut poetry collection, If They Come For Us, is available now
Jason Bayani, whose second poetry collection, Locus, is forthcoming next year
F. Douglas Brown and his poetry collection, ICON, which released earlier this year
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and her debut novel, Harmless Like You, which released last year
Ching-in Chen and their latest collection, recombinant, published last year
Franny Choi and her next poetry collection, Soft Science, forthcoming April 2019
Duy Doan and his award-winning first poetry collection, We Play a Game, which released this past March
Will Nu'utupu Giles, whose slams and other performances are available here
Janine Joseph, whose poetry collection, Driving Without a License, won our Kundiman Poetry Prize
Ansley Moon, who is working on a poetry collection tentatively titled Girl Country and whose other writing can be found here
Bushra Rehman, whose first YA novel, Corona: Stories of a Queens Girlhood, releases next year
Sejal Shah, whose prose and poetry can be found here
Sadia Shepard, whose memoir, The Girl From Foreign, is available now
Mai Der Vang, whose debut poetry collection, Afterland, is available now