Join Kundiman for an evening of readings from this year's graduating Retreat Fellows: Jessica Abughattas, Noah Arhm Choi, Bushra Rehman, and Monica Sok.

This event is part of the 2026 Kundiman Retreat, which provides a space for AAPI writers to build community with one another as they forge deeper relationships to their artistic processes and generate new work. Retreat attendees, known as Kundiman Fellows, take craft classes during the Retreat — one with each Faculty member, in either fiction or poetry. After an admitted Fellow attends their first Retreat, they are welcome to return two more times, culminating in their graduation at their third Retreat. This model gives each Kundiman Fellow the opportunity to develop their craft and receive mentorship over a period of time.

This event will take place in ARC E-02 in the ARC Building on Pratt Institute's Brooklyn Campus and is open to the public. Registration is required, and attendees must go through the main gate at 200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY. Please RSVP by Sunday, June 14th.

Readers:

Jessica Abughattas is the author of the debut poetry collection Strip, an Etel Adnan Poetry Prize winner. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Poem-A-Day, The Yale Review, LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. A former poet laureate of Altadena, CA, her lyric essays on post-fire Los Angeles can be found in West Branch and Orion Magazine. She received an MFA from Antioch University and currently serves as Co-Chair for Kundiman’s Southern California regional group.

Noah Arhm Choi is the author of Cut to Bloom, winner of the 2019 Jack McCarthy Prize. A Lambda Literary Poet-In-Residence and Valentines Editor for Honey Literary, they received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and their work appears in The Adroit Journal, Split this Rock, The Rumpus, Foglifter, and elsewhere. Noah was shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize and received the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. They serve on the Kundiman Board of Trustees and currently work at NYU Metro Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. A K-12 educator of fifteen years, they work to embolden the intersection of education, activism, and the arts.

Bushra Rehman’s novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, a modern classic about being Muslim and queer was noted as a Best Book and Editor’s Choice by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, among others. Rehman is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the poetry collection Marianna’s Beauty Salon and the novel Corona, chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. She received the Queens Public Library award in 2024. Rehman has led writing workshops for Poet’s House, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She created and facilitates the community-based workshop Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction.

Monica Sok is a Khmer American poet and a daughter of refugees. She is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On and Year Zero, winner of a 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and is a recipient of grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Hedgebrook, Jerome Foundation, Kundiman, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2018, she was recognized with a 92Y Discovery Prize. She has taught at Barnard College, Stanford University, and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants. She lives in New York City.