September 18 & 20: #LITINCOLOR at The Brooklyn Book Festival
Friday, September 18, 2015
7:00 PM
Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Poets Yesenia Montilla and Angel Nafis join nonfiction writer Amarnath Ravva and fiction writer Gina Apostol to celebrate writers of color. The authors will read from New York-based writers of color that have influenced them, and from their own work. This reading is presented by Asian American literary organizations Kaya Press and Kundiman, who will be sharing a booth at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday Sept. 20th. #LitinColor is a campaign to draw attention to the influence of writers of color on the national imagination.
Bios:
GINA APOSTOL's last novel, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2014 William Saroyan International Prize. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). She is working on William McKinley’s World, a novel set in Balangiga and Tacloban in 1901, during the Philippine-American War. She was writer-in-residence at Phillips Exeter Academy and a fellow at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, among other fellowships. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, the Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City.
YESENIA MONTILLA is a New York City poet with Afro-Caribbean roots. Her poetry has appeared in the chapbook For the Crowns of Your Head, as well as the literary journals 5AM,Adanna, The Wide Shore and others. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation and is a CantoMundo Fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box will be published by Willow Books in October of 2015.
ANGEL NAFIS (Brooklyn, NY) is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Union Station Magazine, MUZZLE Magazine, Mosaic Magazine and Poetry Magazine. She is an Urban Word NYC Mentor and the founder, curator, and host of the quarterly Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon reading series. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012). Facilitating generative writing workshops and reading poems across the United States and Canada, she lives in Brooklyn.
California-based writer AMARNATH RAVVA (Los Angeles, CA) is the author of American Canyon (Kaya Press, 2014). He has performed at LACMA, Machine Project, the MAK Center at the Schindler House, New Langton Arts, the Hammer Museum, USC, Pomona, CalArts, and the Sorbonne. In addition to his writing practice, he is a member of the site specific ambient music supergroup Ambient Force 3000, and for the past nine years he has helped run and curate events at Betalevel, a venue for social experimentation and hands-on culture located in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. He is currently working on a book about Victorian era botanical expeditions called The Glass House.
Facebook Event Page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1719097484980473/
Kundiman & Kaya Booth at the Brooklyn Book FestivaL
Sunday, September 20th, 10am – 6pm
Table #247
Join Kaya Press and Kundiman for a scavenger hunt and readings by writers of color at Table #247 at The Brooklyn Book Festival.
September 1: Bryant Park Word for Word Reading
Kundiman partners with Bryant Park's Word for Word Reading Series to present a delightful en plein air reading.
Featuring poets:
Lo Kwa Mei-en
Rickey Laurentiis
Brenda Shaughnessy
Wendy Xu
Tuesday, September 1st, 7PM
Bryant Park Reading Room
6th Avenue and 42nd Street
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1476986885954984/
Lo Kwa Mei-en is the author of YEARLING (Alice James Books 2015), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize. Her poems can be found in Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, and other journals. She is from Singapore and Ohio, where she currently lives and works.
Rickey Laurentiis is the author of Boy with Thorn, selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press in Fall 2015. He is the recipient of 2013 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2012 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up in southern California. She is the author of Our Andromeda (2012), Human Dark with Sugar (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy (1999). Shaughnessy’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Rumpus. She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark and lives in New Jersey with her husband, son, and daughter.
WENDY XU is the author of You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2013) and the recipient of a 2014 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship
August 20: My Baryo, My Borough Creative Writing Workshop
August 16: Reading Rizal, A Exploration of Noli Me Tangere
Kundiman & The Home School Partnership
Kundiman and The Home School would like to announce their inaugural partnership and name Rajiv Mohabir as the recipient of a Home School Miami 2016 scholarship! He will be receiving a full tuition waiver (1175 USD) plus a travel honorarium (500 USD) for the full residency as the winner of the 2015 Kundiman Book Prize.
The Home School organizes weeklong conferences for poets and artists. Home School participants spend six days immersed in an intensive program that foregrounds interdisciplinary experimentation and collaboration.
Apply to The Home School residency by the free early-bird deadline of August 31 to participate in Home School activities.
Miami Beach, Florida:
JANUARY 3RD-8TH, 2016
Home School Miami 2016 will feature core poetry faculty: Timothy Donnelly, Adam Fitzgerald, Cathy Park Hong, Dorothea Lasky, Tan Lin, Maggie Nelson and Mónica de la Torre. Visiting poets: Natalie Diaz, Renee Gladman, Mira Gonzalez, Jorie Graham and Derek Walcott.
July 28: Kundiman with Lunchtime Poems in Military Park
Kundiman is reading with the Lunchtime Poems reading series on Tuesday, July 28, 12:30 - 1:30pm. Reading will be held on the Plaza in Military Park, Newark, NJ.
Tuesday, July 28 from 12:30 - 1:30pm
Military Park in Newark, NJ
Admission is free
Featured readers are Wo Chan, Chen Chen, Amy Meng, and Alison Roh Park.
BIOS:
Wo Chan is a queer Fujianese poet and drag performer. A recipient of fellowships from Poets House, Kundiman, and Lambda Literary, Wo’s work has been published in cream city review, BARZAHK, and VYM Magazine. As a member of Brooklyn-based drag alliance, Switch n' Play, Wo has performed at venues including Brooklyn Pride, The Trevor Project, and the Architectural Digest Expo. Wo is a 2015 AAWW Margins Fellow.
Chen Chen is the author of the chapbook Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015). His poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Narrative, [PANK], The Best American Poetry 2015, among others. He is the winner of the Matt Clark Award from New Delta Review and the Joyce Carol Oates Award, selected by Ishion Hutchinson. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and this fall he will be joining the PhD program in English & Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Visit him at chenchenwrites.com
Amy Meng’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, The Normal School, North Dakota Quarterly, Pleiades, and Slice Magazine. She is a Kundiman Fellow and was a finalist for the Margins fellowship. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and serves as a poetry editor at Bodega Magazine.
Alison Roh Park is a Kundiman fellow, Pushcart nominated poet, and past winner of of the PSA New York Chapbook Fellowship, Poets & Writers Magazine Amy Award, and Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. She teaches ethnic studies at Hunter College and is a founding member of The Good Times Collective of emerging poets writing in the tradition of Lucille Clifton.
In case of rain, readings will be held in the New Jersey Historical Society as 52 Park Place. Co-sponsored by the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and the Military Park Partnership. Admission is free.
June 20: Transatlantic Poetry with Janine Joseph & Shruti Iyer; Hosted by R.A. Villanueva
Tune in to the Transatlantic Poetry channel to watch Janine Joseph and Shruti Iyer read poetry and answer your questions live on air across two continents! Supported by Kundiman. Hosted by R.A. Villanueva.
Saturday, 20th, 2015
8pm BST | 3pm EDT | 12pm PDT
Online Channel
TRANSATLANTIC Poetry is a unique community of poets writing in (or translating to) English from the US, UK, Europe, and beyond. We host an innovative series of readings “on air” that brings poets together from across the globe using Google+ Hangouts on Air technology.
Click here for the countdown.
BIOS:
Shruti Iyer is a writer, activist, and student of Politics, Philosophy, and Law at King's College London. She was also a Barbican Young Poet in 2014-15. Her work has previously appeared in Stone Telling. When she is not hunting for guavas in South London, chasing pigeons, or singing to plants, she tweets @arreyaar and (occasionally) writes at http://salem-steel.tumblr.com/.
Janine Joseph is the author of Driving Without a License (Alice James Books, 2016), winner of the 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize. Her commissioned work for the Houston Grand Opera/HGOco stage includes a libretto, From My Mother's Mother, and a song cycle, "On This Muddy Water": Voices from the Houston Ship Channel. She holds an MFA from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Janine lives in Ogden, UT, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Weber State University.
R.A.Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (U. Nebraska Press, 2014). His many honours include fellowships from Kundiman and The Asian American Literary Review, and scholarships from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. He holds graduate degrees from Rutgers University and New York University, where he is a Senior Lecturer.
Congratulations to the winner of the 2015 Kundiman Poetry Prize!
Congratulations to Rajiv Mohabir, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Poetry Prize.
Tupelo Press Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Levine and Associate Poetry Editor Cassandra Cleghorn have selected Rajiv Mohabir as winner of the 2015 Kundiman Poetry Prize for his manuscript, The Cowherd's Son.
The winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, publication by Tupelo Press, and national distribution.
Winner of 2015 AWP Intro Journal Award and the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way Books for his first full-length collection The Taxidermist’s Cut (Spring 2016), and recipient of a PEN/ Heim Translation Fund Grant, Rajiv Mohabir received fellowships from Voices of Our Nation’s Artist foundation, Kundiman, and the American Institute of Indian Studies language program. His poetry and translations are internationally published or forthcoming from journals such as Best American Poetry 2015, Quarterly West, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Drunken Boat, Anti-, Great River Review, PANK, *and Aufgabe. He received his MFA in Poetry and Translation from at Queens College, CUNY where he was Editor in Chief of the *Ozone Park Literary Journal. Currently he is pursuing a PhD in English from the University of Hawai`i, where he teaches poetry and composition.
The finalists were Radio Tower by Naoko Fujimoto, Cyclorama by Annie Kim, Child of Shame by EJ Koh, Goddess of Democracy by Henry Wei Leung, Autumn Troupe by Miho Nonaka, Tula by Chris Santiago, As Though We Are One by Alexandrine Vo, Republic of Mercy by Sharon Wang, and Overpour by Jane Wong.
Congratulations to the winner and finalists!
Now in its 6th year, the Kundiman Poetry Prize ensures the annual publication of a book by an Asian American poet. The award is open to self-identified Asian American poets at any stage in their careers. For more about the Kundiman Poetry Prize, please visit kundiman.org/prize.
June 26: 2015 Kundiman Retreat Public Reading
Come celebrate Kundiman's 12th Annual Writing Retreat as retreat faculty Sandra Lim, Bao Phi, Arthur Sze, Gina Apostol, Peter Ho Davies, & Sigrid Nunez share work with 2015 Kundiman Retreat Fellows. Also sharing their work will be this year's graduating fellows Janine Joseph and W. Todd Kaneko!
Friday, June 26th, 7:00 pm
Fordham University, Lincoln Center
113 W. 60th Street (at Columbus Avenue)
12th Floor Lounge
Directions
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 Asian American Poetry event. Take escalators up 1 floor to Plaza level. Take elevator up to the 11th floor. Take stairs 1 flight up to the 12th Floor. Enter 12th Floor Lounge.
Free and open to the public. Reception to follow!
***
Sandra Lim is the author of The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014), selected by Louise Glück for the most recent Barnard Women Poets Prize, and a previous collection of poetry, Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006). A 2015 Pushcart Prize winner, she has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Getty Research Institute. Lim was born in Seoul, Korea and educated at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and lives in Cambridge, MA.
Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991. A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His first collection of poems, Sông I Sing, was published by Coffee House Press in 2011 to critical acclaim. He has been a City Pages and Star Tribune Artist of the Year. He was recently awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board grant to work on his newest manuscript in 2015. He is the Program Director of the Loft Literary Center.
Arthur Sze published three books in 2014: his ninth book of poetry, Compass Rose (Copper Canyon), a collaboration with artist Susan York, The Unfolding Center (Radius Books), and a bilingual selected poems, Chinese/English, Pig’s Heaven Inn (Beijing: Intellectual Property Publishing House). His other books of poetry include The Ginkgo Light, Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, and Archipelago. A professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, as well as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Sze lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Gina Apostol's last novel, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 Pen/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2014 William Saroyan International Prize. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). She is working on William McKinley's World, a novel set in Balangiga and Tacloban in 1901, during the Philippine-American War. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Philippines.
Peter Ho Davies is the author of the novel The Welsh Girl and collections The Ugliest House in the World and Equal Love. A new novel, Your Name in Chinese, is due out in 2016. Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, Davies now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Emory and Northwestern and is now on the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Sigrid Nunez has published six novels: A Feather on the Breath of God, Naked Sleeper, Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, For Rouenna, The Last of Her Kind, and Salvation City. Her most recent book is Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Nunez received a Whiting Writer’s Award in 1993. She was the 2000-2001 Rome Prize Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome. In 2003, she was elected as a Literature Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In spring 2005, she was the Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Nunez has taught at Amherst College, Smith College, Columbia University, Princeton University and the New School. She lives in New York City.