On April 19th, we will be hosting an in-person panel with The New School to discuss the changes, present, and future of Asian American writing. As we reflect on Kundiman’s upcoming 20th anniversary in 2024 and the fact that the first book centering Asian American literature, Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context by Elaine Kim was published in 1982, this conversation will explore changes in the writing and publishing of Asian American literature. Featuring acclaimed writers and publishing professionals Duy Đoàn, Joseph O. Legaspi, Jade Wong-Baxter, and Kyle Lucia Wu, this panel will be moderated by Margaret Rhee, and will be held on Wednesday, April 19th at 6 PM ET at The New School at 66 W 12th Street, 4th Floor, Room 407.
Read more about our panelists below:
Duy Đoàn (pronounced zwē dwän / zwee dwahn) is the author of We Play a Game (Yale University Press) and the forthcoming Zombie Vomit Mad Libs (Alice James Books, coming in November 2024), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Duy’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has been featured in PBS’s Poetry in America and Poetry magazine’s Editors’ Blog. He received an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he later served as director of the Favorite Poem Project, favoritepoem.org.
Joseph O. Legaspi, a Fulbright and NYSCA/New York Foundation for the Arts fellow, is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and three chapbooks: Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). Recent works have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, The Common, World Literature Today and Best of the Net. He works at Columbia University and teaches creative writing at New York University and Fordham University. He co-founded Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Margaret Rhee is a poet, scholar, and new media artist. Her debut poetry collection Love, Robot was named a 2017 Best Book of Poetry by Entropy Magazine and awarded a 2018 Elgin Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association and the 2019 Best Book Award in Poetry by the Asian American Studies Association. Her new media art project The Kimchi Poetry Machine was selected for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3. She has taught at the University of Oregon, Harvard University, and currently at SUNY Buffalo (UB), where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study. At UB, she co-leads the Palah 파랗 Light Lab, a feminist and queer media lab that fosters community participation through technology.
Jade Wong-Baxter joined the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in 2021. She previously worked for three years at Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents as a junior agent and foreign rights associate. A graduate of Vassar College, Jade got her start in publishing at Writers House, W. W. Norton, and Folio Literary Management. Her clients include Chris Belcher (PRETTY BABY, Avid Reader, 2022); Delia Cai (CENTRAL PLACES, Ballantine, 2023); and Hannah Matthews (YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE, Atria, 2023). Jade is looking for adult literary/upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction, with an emphasis on narratives by and about people of color, as well as the perspectives of marginalized identities. Her other areas of interest include magical realism, memoir, cultural criticism, and Asian American history.
Kyle Lucia Wu is the author of Win Me Something (Tin House Books 2021), an NPR Best Book of the Year, and the co-author of the forthcoming An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books 2023). Her work has appeared in Catapult, BOMB Magazine, The Margins, and Literary Hub, where she was the party correspondent. A former Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellow, Kyle is the Managing Director at Kundiman and has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School.
To register for the panel and learn more about The New School’s COVID-19 protocols for in-person events, click here. We hope to see you there!