ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH jen lue
Jen Lue is a Kundiman Fellow, and attended her first Kundiman Retreat in 2013. She has been President of the Fellows Council since November 2022. She was interviewed by Gina Chung on August 20, 2025.
INTERVIEW EXCERPT 1
Jen Lue reflects on the ways attending the Kundiman Retreat introduced her to a larger group of writers and helped her decide to get an MFA. She notes that being part of the Kundiman community and the New York literary community made her own pursuit of writing seem more possible, because she was able to observe other writers’ paths firsthand.
TRANSCRIPT
LUE: It did introduce me into a community of folks who stayed in touch, and through them (again, meeting friends of friends) really, really helped me on the journey to eventually — not that writing is solely about this, but it did help me decide eventually that I did want to try to get an MFA [Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing]. It did help me see that a career in writing was possible and that there were many, many different ways to do that. So, I think the Kundiman community became a natural built-in part to my New York literary community as a whole, which I think has a lot of different spokes to it. But just being able to celebrate other people's accolades, it's quite encouraging and helped me to see that no matter what your age or your background, these things are definitely possible. And that had a huge influence on somebody who was, you know, 23 at the time and wondering whether or not she was actually going to even continue doing the writing. My career path after college definitely skewed towards the art world, and so I was not 100% sure if I was going to continue doing writing at all. I think getting into the Kundiman Retreat, meeting folks who were doing this while holding jobs and doing other things, definitely encouraged me to continue on that path.
INTERVIEW EXCERPT 2
Jen Lue recounts the fun of karaoke nights at the Retreat. She also describes feeling a lack of separation between Retreat Faculty and Kundiman Fellows, and between Kundiman Office Staff and Fellows, which contributes to engagement in the community.
TRANSCRIPT
LUE: [K]araoke nights at the Retreat were always incredible. I remember maybe one of the first or second times that I met my friend, Karen Gu, we sang Evanescence "Bring Me To Life" at [laughs] one of the Kundiman Retreat karaokes, which was so, so much fun. I do also really enjoy -- I think that Kundiman does a pretty good job of not separating or not having this hierarchy between instructors [Retreat Faculty] and students [Fellows], Staff [Kundiman Office Staff] and students [Fellows]. I think there's a lot of openness among those parties and, again, some of my best friends from Kundiman are fellow Fellows and a lot of them are also Kundiman Staff members, which I think speaks a lot to the level of engagement and the way in which even Staff members are a deep, deep part of the community because you're all working together, because it's scrappy.
INTERVIEW EXCERPT 3
Jen Lue shares her view of how the AAPI literary landscape has changed since she attended her first Kundiman Retreat in 2013. She observes a broadening and deepening of the literary community, especially with respect to consideration of South Asian, Southeast Asian, and West Asian writers.
TRANSCRIPT
LUE: I would say that at the time I went to the Retreat, I really only knew about Kundiman and maybe Asian American Writers' Workshop, but the proliferation of AAPI writers has really boomed in the past 10+ years. So I would say that I think the community has deepened. I think it has broadened. And I think with that, as things become more complex, issues that were not really considered back in 2013 have started to kind of show themselves, I think ultimately in a positive light. So I really welcome the journey that the community has been on. I think from my experience of Kundiman in 2013, there definitely seemed to be a predominance of East Asian writers, and not so much consideration for South Asian, Southeast Asian, West Asian [writers]. These categories were still not really at the tip of people's tongues. And I think that everything that has happened since then — especially with the geopolitical conflicts that have come up, particularly in the past five years, but have been enduring for way longer than that — really put a spotlight into what community means and how we can welcome even wider ranges of groups into that [AAPI literary] identity.
CITATION
Lue, Jen. Oral history interview conducted by Gina Chung, August 20 2025, Kundiman Oral History Project.