Join Kundiman off-site at AWP 2019 as six fellows read from newly released books and chapbooks! George Abraham will read from The Specimen's Apology, Jason Bayani from Locus, Ching-In Chen from To Make Black Paper Sing, Shamala Gallagher from Late Morning When the World Burns, Vanessa Huang from Quiet of Chorus, and Sally Wen Mao from Oculus.

This event will be held at De-Canon in Portland. You can RSVP here.

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian-American poet and Bioengineering PhD candidate at Harvard University. They are the author of Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), as well as two chapbooks: The Specimen's Apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019) and al youm (TAR, 2017). He is a Kundiman, Watering Hole, and Poetry Incubator fellow, winner of the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize, and recipient of the Best Poet title from the College Union Poetry Slam International. Their writing has appeared or is forthcoming with The Paris Review, Tin House, The American Poetry Review, LitHub, Boston Review, and in anthologies such as Bettering American Poetry and Nepantla.

Jason Bayani is the author of Amulet (Write Bloody Publishing, 2013). He's an MFA graduate from Saint Mary's College, a Kundiman fellow, and works as the Artistic Director for Kearny Street Workshop. Jason performs regularly around the country and debuted his solo theater show "Locus of Control" in 2016. His second book Locus is forthcoming from Omnidawn Publishing in Spring 2019.

Ching-In Chen is author of The Heart's Traffic and recombinant (2018 winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets.

Shamala Gallagher is an Indian/Irish American poet and essayist whose first book is Late Morning When the World Burns (The Cultural Society, 2019). She is also the author of a chapbook, I Learned the Language of Barbs and Sparks No One Spoke (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), and her writing has appeared in Poetry, The Rumpus, The Offing, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere.

Born in Berkeley and home in diaspora from California and Taipei to Atlanta, New York, and Tianjin, Vanessa Huang is a multimedia poet, artist, and cultural worker whose practice inherits teachings from the prison industrial complex abolition, gender liberation, and intersecting social justice movements. For over 15 years, Vanessa has worked to shift cultural narratives and strategies based in fear, violence, and exploitation towards realities centering love, vision, and transformation. quiet of chorus (UpSet Press 2018) is Vanessa’s debut poetry collection. Vanessa has received literary fellowships from Kundiman and Macondo, holds a BA in Ethnic Studies from Brown University, and has worked with racial, economic, and trans/gender justice organizations with a focus on decarceration, homecoming, and transformative justice. Vanessa’s interdisciplinary work and writings have conversed through community organizing, printmaking, and rallies; film, choreography, and sonic performance; letters to/from prison; and a range of publications including critical race and gender studies journals, magazines, and the anthologies Abolition Now: Ten Years of Strategy Against the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2008), Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2011), Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011), and Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices (Trans-Genre Press, 2015).

Sally Wen Mao is the author of Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019) and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). She has won a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship at the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.