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.

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.
 

March 19: AALR Local/Express Brooklyn Book Release with Cathy Linh Che, April Naoko Heck, Eugenia Leigh, R.A. Villanueva, and more!

Wednesday, March 19th, 2014, 7pm

Dumbo Sky
10 Jay Street #903
Brooklyn, New York

STORYTELLING/OPEN MIC FEATURING (in formation):
Jaishri Abichandani
Tina Chang
Cathy Linh Che (AALR A Lettre Fellow)
Curtis Chin
April Naoko Heck
Eugenia Leigh (AALR A Lettre Fellow)
Ed Lin
Swati Marquez
Peter Ong
Zohra Saed
RA Villanueva (AALR A Lettre Fellow)
YaliniDream

& Nancy Bulalacao, hosting the mic

"They were out there all around us: a startling array of offbeat, outspoken, and idealistic Asian American artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and organizers who converged [in] New York City in the '90s—most of them, like us, a double "second generation," the children of immigrants and students of the first wave of Asian American Studies.... This collection is a relief map of unexplored history. But it is also a first draft of the future." - Jeff Yang from foreword of Local/Express: Asian American Arts and Culture 90s NYC.

Come celebrate the release of a new anthology by The Asian American Literary Review that captures some of the voices, reflections, and energy of Asian American NYC in the 90s with artists active then and now!

The Facebook event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/214988622034254/

Lantern Review previews 2014 books by Cathy Linh Che, Oliver de la Paz, Tarfia Faizullah, Sally Wen Mao, Eugenia Leigh, W. Todd Kaneko, and R.A. Villanueva.

Congrats, dear fellows!

From Lantern Review editor Iris A. Law: 

"Today, just in time for the start of the year of the lunar new year, we’re finishing off our two-part roundup of books that we’re looking forward to in 2014.  Last week’s post (part 1) focused on recently published titles, while today’s (part 2) focuses on forthcoming books that are due out later this year.

Note: the books discussed below are divided by category according to whether they are currently available for pre-order, or whether specific details of their release have, as of this posting, yet to be announced. For each category, books are listed alphabetically by author."

Available for Pre-order

Split by Cathy Linh Che (forthcoming from Alice James Books in April 2014)

Turn by Wendy Chin-Tanner (forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press in March 2014)

Post Subject by Oliver de la Paz (forthcoming from U of Akron Press in August 2014)

Seam by Tarfia Faizullah (forthcoming from SIU Press in March 2014)

Mad Honey Symposium by Sally Wen Mao (forthcoming from Alice James Books in May 2014)

Forthcoming (Specific Details to Come)

Picture Dictionary by Kristen Eliason (forthcoming from Flaming Giblet in 2014)

Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows by Eugenia Leigh (forthcoming from Four Way Books in fall 2014)

The Dead Wrestler Elegies by W. Todd Kaneko (forthcoming from Curbside Splendor in 2014)

Reliquaria by R. A. Villanueva (forthcoming from U of Nebraska Press in fall 2014)

For the full post, click on the link below:

http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/2014/01/31/editors-corner-books-were-looking-forward-to-in-2014-part-2/

Nov. 21 Natalie Diaz, April Naoko Heck, and Ocean Vuong read at the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Moderated by R.A. Villanueva

Event Details

Asian American Writers' Workshop
112 W 27th St
New York, NY
7pm

Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/552519674824154/

It's Decorative Gourd Season around here, as McSweeney’s famously declared — a time to look back at all the hard work that’s gone into producing the fruits we now collect and devour in gluttonous revelry.

To mark the season, we’re inviting poets, writers, and readers alike to join us in celebrating the fruits of three poets’ labors. April Naoko Heck, Natalie Diaz, and Ocean Vuong will share their work and talk with R.A. Villanueva about their obsessions and preoccupations as the days get shorter. 

In A Nuclear Family, her first collection of poems, April Naoko Heck contemplates a lineage passing through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the world of nuclear power outside of Cleveland. Born in Tokyo, she relocated with her family to the U.S. when she was seven. A Kundiman Fellow, she has been awarded residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She works for the NYU Creative Writing Program and lives in Brooklyn. 

Natalie Diaz delves into life on a reservation in the American Southwest in When My Brother Was an Aztec, where family collides with conquest and empire. She is a member of the Mojave and Pima Indian tribes and attended Old Dominion University on a full athletic scholarship. After playing professional basketball in Austria, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey she returned to ODU for an MFA in writing. Her work was selected by Natasha Trethewey for Best New Poets, and she has received the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She lives in Surprise, Arizona.

Ocean Vuong’s work examines love, longing, and family memory against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Born in 1988 in Saigon, he was raised by women (a single mother, aunts, and a grandmother) in Hartford, Connecticut, and received his BA in English literature from Brooklyn College. He is the author of two chapbooks: No and Burnings, which was an American Library Association’s Over The Rainbow selection. A recipient of a 2013 Pushcart Prize, other honors include fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, and the Saltonstall Foundation For the Arts, as well as an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Al Savard Award. He lives in New York, where he reads chapbook submissions as the associate editor of Thrush Press. 

R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He is also the winner of the 2013 Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry. A semi-finalist for the 2013 "Discovery"/Boston Review Prize and a finalist for the 2011 Beatrice Hawley and Kinereth Gensler Awards, additional honors include fellowships from Kundiman and The Asian American Literary Review, and scholarships from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. 

Seats are limited! Reserve yours here: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/decorative-gourd-season-a-poetry-reading-tickets-9290410869?aff=eorg

 

Oct. 5 Cynthia Arrieu-King, Michelle Chan Brown, Cathy Linh Che, Evan Chen, Vanessa Huang, Jee Leong Koh, Sally Wen Mao, Alison Roh Park, Purvi Shah, R.A. Villanueva read at AAWW's Page Turner

October 5

Kundiman Marathon Poetry Reading at AAWW's PageTurnerFest

11 am - 12 pm

Roulette Ballroom
509 Atlantic Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11217

This special marathon reading presents some of the best emerging Asian American poets.

Featuring Michelle Chan Brown (Double Agent), Cathy Linh Che (Split ), Evan Chen, Vanessa Huang, Cynthia Arrieu-King (Manifest), Jee Leong Koh (Seven Studies for a Self Portrait), Sally Wen Mao (Mad Honey Symposium), Alison Roh Park (What We Push Against), Purvi Shah (Terrain Tracks), and R.A. Villanueva (Reliquaria)

For more information, visit http://pageturnerfest.org/ 

Cynthia Arrieu-King works as an associate professor of creative writing at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She is the author of two collections of poetry, People are Tiny in Paintings of China (Octopus Books, 2010) and Manifest (Switchback Books, 2013).  

Michelle Chan Brown’s Double Agent was the winner of the 2012 Kore First Book Award, judged by Bhanu Kapil. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, The Missouri Review, and Witness. She lives with DC, where she teaches, writes, and edits Drunken Boat.

Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split (Alice James Books, 2014), the winner of the 2012 Kundiman Poetry Prize. She has also received fellowships from Poets & Writers, Poets House, and LMCC's Workspace Residency.

 Evan Robert Chen is a doctoral student in creative writing at SUNY Albany, where he has taught courses in poetry and film. You can listen to his poems and drones at marrymepoems.tumblr.com.

Poet, Artist, and Cultural Organizer Vanessa Huang weaves poemsongs with moments of creative aliveness and transformative encounter, color, and texture in call and response with kindred spirits who dream and make worlds where each and all of us are free. She was a finalist for Poets & Writers’ 2010 California Writers Exchange Award.

Jee Leong Koh is the author of four books of poems, including Seven Studies for a Self Portrait (Bench Press). His most recent collection, The Pillow Book, will be translated into Japanese and published by Awai Books in 2014. Born in Singapore, he now lives in New York, and blogs at Song of a Reformed Headhunter.

 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 in Guernica, Gulf Coast, and Indiana Review. 

Alison Roh Park is a Kundiman fellow, Pushcart nominated poet, and winner of the 2011 Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship, 2012 Poets and Writers Magazine Amy Award and 2010 Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. She currently teaches Asian American Studies at Hunter College and writes for www.racefiles.com.

Purvi Shah won the inaugural SONY South Asian Excellence Award for Social Service for her work fighting violence against women. Her debut book,Terrain Tracks, garnered the Many Voices Project prize and was nominated for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award. You can find more of her work at http://purvipoets.net, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/purvi-shah/, or @PurviPoets.

R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He is also the winner of the 2013 Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry. A founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, he lives in Brooklyn.

Michelle Chan Brown, April Naoko Heck, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Chris Santiago, & R.A. Villanueva published in Kartika Review

Congrats, dear fellows and alums!

We’re excited to announce the release of our latest publication, Issue 16, Fall 2013.

In This Issue: Michelle Chan Brown, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, April Naoko Heck, Susan Ito, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Minh Pham, Danny Robles, Chris Santiago, R. A. Santos, Shubha Venugopal, R.A. Villanueva, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang.

Interviews with Li-Young Lee, acclaimed poet and author of four books of poetry and a memoir, including Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008) and Shin Yu Pai, author of eight books of poetry, including Aux Arcs (La Alameda Press, 2013).

APIA Commentary by David Mura: The Student of Color in the Typical MFA Program.

Go here to check out their work! http://kartikareview.com/?p=558

R.A. Villanueva wins the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in poetry for his manuscript Reliquaria

Congrats, dear Ron! 

The winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in poetry is R.A. Villanueva for his manuscript Reliquaria. His writing has appeared in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Bellevue Literary Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. A founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, his honors include the 2013 Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry, fellowships from Kundiman and The Asian American Literary Review, and scholarships from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. He is currently a Language Lecturer at New York University and lives in Brooklyn. 

The winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in fiction is Amina Gautier for her manuscript Now We Will Be Happy. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and is the author of the short story collection At-Risk (U of Georgia P), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. More than seventy-five of her stories have been published or are forthcoming in journals such as Antioch Review, Callaloo, Chattahoochee Review, Crazyhorse, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, and Southern Review, among others. Her work has received scholarships and fellowships from the Breadloaf Writer's Conference, Callaloo Writer’s Conference, Hurston/Wright Foundation, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and others, as well as artist grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Both will receive a $3,000 prize and publication by the University of Nebraska Press. Their books will be available in September 2014. 

http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/?q=book-prize/current-winners