Congrats, dear Wo! Visit here for more information about the 2014 Lambda Literary Fellows.
July 22: Kundiman at Word for Word Poetry
Word for Word Poetry welcomes Kundiman for a summer night of contemporary Asian American poetry in the park!
FEATURING Michelle Chan Brown, Cathy Linh Che, Eugenia Leigh, Sally Wen Mao, & Patrick Rosal
7:00pm – 8:30pm | Bryant Park Reading Room
* This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. *
Bios:
MICHELLE CHAN BROWN’s Double Agent was the winner of the 2011 Kore First Book Award, judged by Bhanu Kapil. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Cimarron Review, Linebreak, The Missouri Review, Quarterly West, Sycamore Review, Witness, and others.
CATHY LINH CHE is the author of Split (Alice James, 2014), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize. A Vietnamese American poet from Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA, she received her BA from Reed College and her MFA from New York University. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Kundiman, Hedgebrook, Poets House, The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency, and a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant.
EUGENIA LEIGH is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014), which was a finalist for both the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including PANK Magazine, North American Review, The Collagist, and the Best New Poets 2010 anthology.
SALLY WEN MAO is a Chinese American poet. She earned a BA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Cornell University. Mao is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets as well as the 2010 RHINO Poetry Editors’ Prize. Her first book, Mad Honey Symposium, appears from Alice James Books in 2014.
PATRICK ROSAL is the author of three full-length poetry collections. His most recent, Boneshepherds (2011), was named a small press highlight by the National Book Critics Circle and a notable book by the Academy of American Poets. His other two books are My American Kundiman (2006), and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (2003). His collections have been honored with the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, Global Filipino Literary Award and the Asian American Writers Workshop Members' Choice Award. In 2009, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines. He is co-founding editor of Some Call It Ballin', a literary sports quarterly.
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Facebook Event
RAIN INFORMATION:
In case of rain, events are held under a tent at the Reading Room. In case of severe weather, please check bryantpark.org for the indoor location.
June 20: Kundiman Public Reading
Congratulations to Janine Joseph, winner of the 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize for her manuscript "Driving Without a License"
Congratulations to Janine Joseph, winner of the 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize. The Alice James Books Board along with members of the Kundiman artistic staff selected her manuscript Driving Without a License. Along with book publication, Janine will also receive $1,000.
Janine Joseph holds an MFA from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, an Inprint/Barthelme Fellowship in Poetry, and an Academy of American Poets prize, she is an Assistant Professor of English at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.
The 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize finalists were: Purge by Michelle Chan Brown, Recombinant by Ching-In Chen, Love the Stranger by Jay Deshpande, quiet of chorus by Vanessa Huang, seconds of needless animal terror by Esther Lee, Cutlish by Rajiv Mohabir, The Space Between by Alison Roh Park, Tula by Chris Santiago, and Overpour by Jane Wong.
Congratulations to the winner and finalists!
Interview with April Naoko Heck
Cathy Linh Che: Your book A Nuclear Family came out this spring. Congratulations! Could you talk a little about the book's title?
April Naoko Heck: Thanks!
The title A Nuclear Family works on several levels: My Japanese great-grandmother was a survivor of Hiroshima, and on the day the bomb fell, my mother was in the womb about twenty miles away in Hiroshima prefecture. My mother later went on to marry my white, American father––who, ironically, worked for a nuclear power plant through the 1980s. During that time––during most of my childhood in Ohio––my little sister, our parents, and I made up a "nuclear family," in that utterly romantic sense of the term.
It occurs to me how new the word “nuclear” is––I just checked the etymology for “nucleus,” which I will share for my fellow word nerds: “1704, "kernel of a nut," 1708, "head of a comet," from Latin nucleus "kernel," from nucula "little nut," . . . . Modern atomic meaning is 1912.”
Yes, “A Nutty Family”––that’s accurate too.
Cathy: We attended all three Kundiman retreats together and graduated together. Why did you apply, and what have you found there as a fellow?
April: In the months leading up to the retreat, I felt lost and demoralized as a writer in New York City. My manuscript was getting rejected from a million places. At the same time, I was working with literary stars, in proximity to, but not part of the glitterati. (Of course, that term is smoke and mirrors; I only had to talk to my non-writer friend to realize how distorted my perspective was, because he hadn’t even heard of writers I envied!)
At my first retreat, I cried as much as I laughed, often in the same breath. The retreat’s workshops were the first time I’d ever studied writing with Asian American faculty. And even though all of us poets came from different places, the common patterns in our histories and struggles to assimilate made for richer conversations and deeper sense of belonging than I’d ever experienced in an academic setting. Kundiman was super vitamin to my creative spirit. It was reinvigorated courage and motivation. It was detox, adrenaline, recovery. It was, and is, my poetry home.
Cathy: What advice would you give to a poet who wants to publish a first book?
Take your time, be patient, and aim high. Everyone should send poems to The New Yorker. Everyone should send their manuscript to the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Over time your best poems will find the right homes, and your manuscript will find the right press. Don’t compare yourself to others. Just do your work with as much joy as you can muster, trust in the process, and, maybe above all, help your friends. The rewards of the latter continue to surprise and delight me.
April Naoko Heck was born in Tokyo and moved to the U.S. with her family when she was seven. A Kundiman Fellow, she has been awarded residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Vermont Studio Center. A Nuclear Family, her first collection of poems, was released by UpSet Press in spring 2014 and is available on Amazon. Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths; book cover by Bianca Stone.
June 5: Mother Tongues Poetry Reading
You are cordially invited to attend our Thursday, June 5th Mother Tongues poetry reading.
Free and open to the public.
Mother Tongues recovers diasporic narratives by chronicling the lives and experiences of mothers across three Asian American generations. Interviews, poetry and performances will combine to form an archive that will document the triumphs and challenges of building lives in America.
Project Manager Melissa Reburiano will introduce Wo Chan, Betty Chen, Jennifer S. Cheng, Helena Chung, Vanessa Huang, and Loreal Lingad who will present their interviews and poetry to create an intergenerational dialogue and exchange.
Thursday, June 5, 7:00 pm
Fordham University, Lincoln Center
South Lounge
113 West 60th Street
Fordham University, Lincoln Center
Take A, B, C, D & 1 trains to Columbus Circle.
Exit at 60th Street & Broadway. Go west of Columbus Avenue.
Upon entering the glass doors inform the security desk that you are attending the English Department event. Take escalators up 1 floor to Plaza level. Head to the back of the Student Cafeteria. You'll see a neon sign for the South Lounge.
May 30: Debut Ball: Reading, Pinata, Dance with Sally Wen Mao, R.A. Villanueva, Tarfia Faizullah, and Cathy Linh Che at AAWW
2014 will go down as an historic year for poetry. We're feting Sally Wen Mao's debut Mad Honey Symposium. Dave Eggers likes its "gritty, world-wise sense of humor that gives her work heavyweight swagger.” Also just released: Cathy Linh Che's Split, a tender exploration of war, diaspora, and violence, and Tarfia Faizullah's Seam, based on interviews with women survivors of the 1971 Pakistani army atrocities Dhaka, Bangladesh. R.A.Villanueva will preview his new book Reliquaria, due out later this year, which discusses, among other things, the "Bodies" exhibition.
Asian American Writers' Workshop
Friday, May 30, 8pm
112 W. 27th Street, Suite 600
New York, NY 10001
Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/293294817493674/
We're celebrating with a reading, of course, but in place of wine and polite conversation afterwards we're throwing a pinata bash and dance party.
Sally Wen Mao is the author of a forthcoming book of poems, Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), the winner of the 2012 Kinereth Gensler Award. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013 and is published or forthcoming Colorado Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Third Coast, and West Branch, among others. The recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, she holds a B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where she is currently a lecturer.
R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. A founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, his honors include the 2013 Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry and fellowships from Kundiman and The Asian American Literary Review. His writing has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including AGNI, The Common, DIAGRAM, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in Brooklyn.
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), winner of the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry’s First Book Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares,The Missouri Review, Passages North, New Ohio Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Southern Review, Mead, Poetry Daily, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, she is a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University program in creative writing.
Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American poet from Los Angeles, CA. She has received awards from The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency, and Poets & Writers. She is a founding editor of Paperbag.
Co-sponsored by Asian American Writers' Workshop.
May 18: Kundiman & Verlaine Reading with Farnoosh Fathi, Timothy Ree, and Jennifer Tseng
Happy spring! Join us for open mic, poetry & libation at the Lower East Side's Verlaine. Come early for open bar! Stay after for Verlaine's delicious happy hour specials.
Open bar 4pm-5pm
Open mic 4:30-5pm
Feature reading begins 5pm
$5 suggested donation
Farnoosh Fathi was born in 1981. She's the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Poetry Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the MacDowell colony, and her poems, translations, and prose have appeared in Boston Review, FENCE, Everyday Genius, Poetry and Jacket2. Her first book of poems, Great Guns, was recently published by Canarium Books.
Timothy Ree teaches English at a public high school in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.Div from Yale University. His poems have appeared in St. Katherine Review, Peregrine Literary Journal of Amherst Writers & Artists, Palimpsest: Yale Literary & Arts Magazine, and Prospect: Yale Divinity School Literary Journal.
Jennifer Tseng’s new book Red Flower, White Flower, winner of the Marick Press Poetry Prize, features English originals alongside Chinese translations by Mengying Han and Aaron Crippen. Tseng works as a literary curator, writing instructor, and circulation assistant at the West Tisbury Library on Martha’s Vineyard. Her debut novel Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness is forthcoming from Europa Editions.
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/450883885056412/
Verlaine
110 Rivington St.
(Ludlow & Essex Sts.)
New York, NY 10012
212-614-2494
F train to Delancey
This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Monica Ong wins 2014 Kore Press First Book Prize
Joy Harjo has selected Monica Ong's Silent Anatomies as the winner of the Kore Press 2014 First Book Prize in Poetry
Congratulations, dear Monica!
Congratulations to Vijay Seshadri: Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Big, big congratulations to Vijay Seshadri on his 2014 Pultizer Prize win for poetry. Seshadri is first Asian American to win this prize. He is the The Michele Tolela Myers Chair in Writing at Sarah Lawrence and an Advisory Board member at Kundiman.