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Spring/Summer 2008
 Events this season sponsored by Singha Beer
Young Adults Brunch!
PEN America Center and The Asian American Writers' Workshop co-host a Saturday morning brunch for
young writers. Teen writers are cordially invited to break bread with, chat with, and present their writing to novelist Kashmira Sheth (The Keeping Corner)
and Simon & Schuster editor Sulay Hernandez (Final Theory).
Former microbiologist Kashmira Sheth writes stories for youth full-time. She is author of Blue Jasmine (Hyperion, 2004), a novel inspired own experiences as a teenager
who moved by herself from India to America. She is also author of Koyal Dark, Mango Sweet (Hyperion, 2006) and a newly-released historical fiction, The Keeping Corner (Hyperion, 2007).
Sheth lives with her family in Madison, Wisconsin.
Simon & Schuster editor Sulay Hernandez has edited a variety of fiction and non-fiction books, most recently Final Theory (Simon & Schuster, 2008), a science-based thriller slated
for release in 20 countries in 19 languages. Sulay worked previously for Kensington Publishing, as well as for a literary agency. A native New Yorker, she teaches at
City College.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
FREE
Buy designer furniture and support The Asian American Writers' Workshop!
The Workshop is getting a makeover -- with the help of Goil Amornvivat of TLC's "Trading Spaces," Parsons The New School for Design, and Design Within Reach Annex.
Buy furniture at the DWR Annex in New Jersey from May 3 through 11 and a percentage of sales will go to supporting the Workshop.
Bring in a print out of this e-mail and the DWR Annex will give you a ten percent discount (10%) on Annex items only!
Please join us for the Opening Reception. Meet Goil and see his exclusive window design featuring work by prominent Asian American writers.
Opening Reception
Saturday, May 3, 12 - 4pm
@ DWR Annex
55 Hartz Way
Seacaucus, NJ 07094
Public transportation: take the 129 bus from Port Authority in Manhattan.
For driving directions and more information, click here
Cosponsored by Design Within Reach, Tug Studio and Parsons
The New School for Design
  
Poetry Reading: Indran Amirthanayagam and Brenda Shaughnessy
Poems of loss and love. In The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2007), Indran Amirthanayagam memorializes the Asian Tsunami in 2004. "I hid your life vest in the death trap on purpose, my love" begins the speaker in "Three Sorries" one of the many spunky and perverse poems in Brenda ShaughnessyÕs new collection, Human Dark With Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008).
Indran Amirthanayagam is a truly cross-cultural writer. At the age of eight, he moved from Sri Lanka to London and Hawaii and currently works as an United States diplomat based in Vancouver, Canada. A poet who works in English, Spanish and French, Amirthanayagam's books include The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose Press, 1993), El Infierno de los Pajaros (Resistencia, Mexico, 2001), El Hombre que Rocoge Nidos (Resistencia/CONARTE, Mexico, 2005) and Ceylon R.I.P. (The International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2001) Amirthanayagam's essays and op-eds have appeared in the Hindu, the New York Times, El Norte, Reforma, The Island, and Groundviews (Sri Lanka). Influenced by Latin American poets, such as Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, Amirthanayagam has been awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Poetry Prize of the Juegos Florales of Guaymas, Sonora, and an award from the US/Mexico Fund for Culture for his translations of Mexican poet Manuel Ulacia. He blogs here.
Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, in 1970 and grew up in Southern California. Her poems -- described by poet Richard Howard as letting us in on both the fun and pain of ecstasy -- have appeared in Best American Poetry, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. Her previous collection, Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award. The poetry editor at Tin House magazine, Shaughnessy has taught poetry at Princeton University and The New School. Human Dark with Sugar is the winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. The Village Voice has praised her "ringing declarations of erotic tumult" and stated that her "linguistic density and invention powers these poems beyond the therapeutic self-massage typically associated with her themes of love, lust, and daughterhood."
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: Jen Sookfong Lee and Preeta Samarasan
Debut fiction night! Jennifer Sookfong Lee's The End of East (Thomas Dunne Books, 2008) explores isolation, immigration, and romance in Vancouver's Chinatown through the eyes of a Chinese Canadian woman in her early twenties. Set on the outskirts of Ipoh in Malaysia, Preeta Samarasan's The Evening Is The Whole Day, reveals the secrets that lead to the topsy-turvy unraveling of the prosperous Rajasekharan family.
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver's East Side, where she now lives with her husband. Her work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, The Claremont, Horsefly, and Jasmine. The End of the East -- described by The National Post as an "impressive" three-generational novel -- was chosen for The New Face of Fiction program, awarded by Knopf to outstanding Canadian novels. Author Gail Anderson-Dargatz writes, "Whatever assumptions I had about Vancouver's Chinatown have been supplanted by Lee's vision of a world where family obligation is passed on through the generations, where personal dreams are sacrificed for family goals as a matter of course."
Born in Malaysia, Preeta Samarasan finished high school in the United States and now lives in France with her husband and dog. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where an earlier version of Evening Is The Whole Day won the Avery and Jule Hopwood Novel Award. Samarasan recently won The Asian American Writers' Workshop/Hyphen Magazine Short-Story award. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in EGO Magazine, A Public Space, and the anthology Urban Odysseys: KL Stories. Author Peter Ho Davies has described Evening as a "a magical, exuberant, tragicomic vision of post-colonial Malaysia reminiscent of Rushdie and Roy. In prose of acrobatic grace, Samarasan conjures a vibrant portrait, by turns intimate and sweeping, of characters and a country coming of age."
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
UnFairy Tales Final Performance
Join us for an evening of short fiction by The Asian American Writers' Workshop's young adult writers. This past spring, as part of a workshop called UnFairy Tales: The Myths in Myths, students questioned traditional myths and wrote their own. In this final performance, they'll read their own UnFairy Tales, wild and fun short stories that defy what you've come to expect from fairy tales. Come here about a baseball-slinging Cinderella and a modern-day Urashima. These students have it all and then some.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
FREE
Special Event: Open House
Drop by this Thursday for three of your favorite things: beer, treats and The Asian American Writers' Workshop. You're invited to our Open House -- a great chance to
snack, mingle, and learn more about the Workshop.
Meet the Workshop's new Executive Director, Ken Chen, as well as some of your favorite Asian American writers, like Ed Lin, Henry Chang, Lara Stapleton, Monica Youn, Purvi Shah
and Timothy Liu.
Co-sponsored by Singha Beer and the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
FREE and open to the public
Panel: Fusion Stories: Next-Gen Asian American Books for Young Readers
Fusion authors Grace Lin, An Na, Janet Wong and David Yoo discuss the new generation of young adult literature featuring Asian American characters. Read more about Fusion Stories here.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: V.V. Ganeshananthan and Manil Suri
An evening of fiction. Suri reads from his second novel, The Age of Shiva (W.W. Norton, 2008) and Ganeshananthan reads from her debut, Love Marriage (Random House, 2008).
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading & Conversation: Fae Myenne Ng
Ng reads from Steer Toward Rock (Hyperion 2008), the eagerly awaited follow-up to her fist novel Bone (Hyperion 1993) and discusses her work with Will Schwalbe, a board member of The Asian American Writers' Workshop.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: Guernica Fiction
An evening of short fiction presented by Guernica/A Magazine of Art & Politics. Fiction writers Alexander Chee, Catherine Chung, Elaine H. Kim, and Jin Yong Sohn read from stories published in the June 2008 issue of Guernica.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Poetry Reading: Bei Dao and Jennifer Chang
An evening of poetry. Bei Dao reads with Chang, author of This History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008).
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: Don Lee and Francie Lin
Madcap stories of mayhem! Don Lee reads from his second novel, Wrack and Ruin (W.W. Norton, 2008), and Lin reads from her debut, The Foreigner (Picador, 2008).
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: The Mixtape Reading Series
The2ndHand.com collaborates with the Workshop to bring you stories about the songs you love, the songs you hate, and the songs you say you hate but secretly love. First 50 attendees get a mix of all the songs on a CD.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: Anita Jain and Sandeep Jauhar
Memoir night. Anita Jain reads from her debut Marrying Anita: Quest for Love in the New India (Bloomsbury, 2008), as does Jauhar, from his, Intern: A Doctor's Insitation (FSG, 2008).
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Poetry Reading: Word For Word Poetry Program in Bryant Park
Join us for a reading in concert with the Word For Word series at Bryant Park.
@ Byrant Park Reading Room
42nd Street Side of Bryant Park between 5th and 6th Avenues
FREE
Reading: Drunken Boat Reading
A reading in concert with the journal Drunken Boat.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
HERE
Winter/Spring 2008 (past events)
Events this season sponsored by Singha Beer
Poetry Reading: Li-Young Lee and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Join us for an evening of poetry. Pinocchio, Madama Butterfly's son, and a boy clown are a few of the characters that Jennifer Kwon Dobbs imagines in Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press, 2007). Playful, erotic, at times mysterious, Li-Young Lee's Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008) describes the immanent value of everyday experience.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her poems have appeared in 5 AM, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ, Tulane Review, among others and have been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 2003) and Contemporary Voices from the Eastern World (W.W. Norton, 2008). Her music collaboration, "Among Joshua Trees," won the New York Youth Symphony's First Music Series and debuted at Carnegie Hall. She is a fellow at the University of Southern California and founding director of the USC SummerTIME Writing Program. Currently, she teaches literature and writing at the City University of New York - La Guardia.
Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behing My Eyes. His earlier collections are Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), Rose (BOA, 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University, The City in Which I Love You (BOA, 1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 1988 he received the Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. He lives in Chicago with his wife Donna and their two sons.
Cosponsored by Kundiman and The Asia Society.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: Susan Choi - A Person of Interest
In a discussion with Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, Harold Augenbraum, Choi will talk about her latest book, A Person of Interest (Penguin, 2008), a vision of a life turned upside-down in the aftermath of a Unabomber-type attack. The novel explores the ethnic, social and psychological dimensions of contemporary American society in an age of terror. Book signing and reception to follow.
Susan Choi was born in Indiana and grew up in Texas. She is the author of The Foreign Student (HarperCollins, 2004), which won the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Discover Great New Writers Award at Barnes & Noble, and American Woman (HarperCollins, 2004). With David Remnick, she edited an anthology of fiction entitled Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
@ The Asia Society
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street
$10 members/students with ID, $12 nonmember
Reading: Ed Lin, Lisa Chen and Tao Lin
An evening of fiction and poetry. In This Is a Bust (Kaya Press, 2007), Ed Lin turns the conventions of hard-boiled pulp stories on their head by exploring the unexotic and very real complexities of New York City's Chinatown, circa 1976, through the eyes of a Chinese-American cop. Mouth (Kaya Press, 2007), Lisa Chen's debut collection of poetry, gives voice to things that occur below the level of hearing or just beyond our notice by way of fables, instructions, classified ads and reality shows. Tao Lin's debut novel Eeeee Eee Eeee (Melville House, 2007) uneasily documents the life of a recent college graduate, Andrew, with surreal touches - celebrity cameos, bears, and dolphins who say 'Eeeee Eee Eeee' to express emotion.
Lisa Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She earned a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work has been published in Hanging Loose, ZZYZVA, Prairie Schooner, and Threepenny Review. She lives in New York and works as a media and communications consultant for progressive organizations and campaigns.
Ed Lin is the author of Waylaid, a novel guided by an unnamed narrator, the 12-year-old son of Taiwanese immigrant parents who run a rundown motel on the New Jersey coast. Published by Kaya Press in 2002, Waylaid was universally praised in a broad range of publications including Booklist, Asianweek and Playboy. Waylaid also won the Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers Workshop in 2003. This Is a Bust, Lin's second novel, was published by Kaya last fall with a starred pre-publication review.
Tao Lin is the author of a story-collection, Bed, and a novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, published simultaneously by Melville House on May 15, 2007 in the first two-book story-collection/novel debut since Ann Beattie in 1976. Tao is also the author of a poetry collection, You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am (Action Books, 2006). Tao's second poetry-collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, will be published in May 2008 by Melville House.
Cosponsored by Singha Beer
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Third Annual Asian American/African American Poetry Reading
Curated by Tracy K. Smith and Tina Chang
Cosponsored by Cave Canem
The Asian American and African American communities gather for a night of brilliant poetry. Readings by Meena
Alexander, Jeffery Renard Allen, Regie Cabico, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, R. Erica Doyle and Bakar Wilson.
Meena Alexander's poetry includes Illiterate Heart, winner of a 2002 PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk (2004), and Quickly Changing
River (2008) all published by TriQuarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press. She is the editor of Indian Love Poems (Everyman's Library/
Knopf, 2005) and author of the memoir Fault Lines (Feminist Press 1993/ 2003) She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College
and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of two collections of poetry,
Stellar Places (Moyer Bell 2007) and Harbors and Spirits (Moyer Bell
1999), and a novel, Rails Under My Back (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
2000), which won The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for Fiction. Born
in Chicago, he holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois
at Chicago and is currently an Associate Professor of English at The
City University of New York and teaches in the graduate writing program
at The New School. He is the Founding Director of the Pan African
Literary Forum. Allen's book of short stories, Bread and the Land, will
be published in 2008. He is presently at work on Talking Talk, a book of
interviews and conversations with fiction writers of African descent
from around the world, and the novel Song of the Shank, based on the
life of Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth century African American
piano virtuoso and composer who performed under the stage name Blind
Tom.
Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer having won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam & has appeared on two seasons of HBO's Def
Poetry Jam. His work appears in over 30 anthologies including Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He is the recipient
of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, The Barnes & Nobles Writers for Writers Award, A Larry Neal Prize for Poetry and a 2008
DC Commission for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. He is the artistic director of Sol & Soul, an arts and activist organization & co-sponsor of
Split This Rock's Poetry Festival: a celebration of Poetry of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC March 20-23 2008.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her debut collection of poetry, Paper Pavilion (White Pine Prees 2007),
is the winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in 5 AM, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ,
among others and have been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 2003) and Language For A New Century (W. W. Norton
2008). She is a fellow at the University of Southern California and founding director of the USC SummerTIME Writing Program. Currently, she
lives in New York City.
R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn, NY to Trinidadian parents. Her work
has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Ms. Magazine, Black Issues Book
Review, Blithe House Quarterly, Utne Reader, Black
Renaissance/Renaissance Noire and Sinister Wisdom and has been
anthologized in Best American Poetry 2001, Voices Rising, Bum Rush the
Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gumbo: Short Fiction by Black Writers, Gathering
Ground, Best Black Women's Erotica 2, and Role Call is forthcoming in
Bloom, Our Antilles: Queer Writing from the Caribbean and Quotes
Community: Notes for Black Poets. She is the recipient of various grants
and awards, including a Fellowship in Poetry from the New York
Foundation for the Arts, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in
Poetry and a Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. She received her MFA in
Poetry from The New School and works as a teacher and literacy coach at
Vanguard High. Her manuscript, proxy, was selected by Claudia Rankine as
a finalist for the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.
Bakar Wilson's work has appeared in the Vanderbilt Review, the
Lumberyard, and three Cave Canem anthologies. He is a native of
Tennessee and currently teaches at Medgar Evers College.
Beer and wine courtesy of Singha Beer
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Reading: Chitrita Banerji and Jennifer 8. Lee
Join us for a sumptuous evening of food-themed tales. In The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Twelve, 2008), New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee chronicles her search for the world's best Chinese restaurant with a mix of in-depth research and entertaining personal anecdotes. Culinary historian, Chitrita Banerji has narrated her love of food in several volumes her latest being Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices (Bloomsbury, 2007), an account of her culinary tour across India.
Chitrita Banerji grew up in Calcutta and came to the United States as a graduate student; she received her master's degree in English from Harvard University. She has since become and internationally recognized writer on Bengali food, and is the author of Life and Food in Bengal (Penguin Books India, 2005), Feeding the Gods (Seagull Books, 2006), and Land of Milk and Honey (Seagull Books, 2007). A two-time winner of the Sophie Coe Awards in Food and History, she has written about food for Gourmet, Gastronomica, Granta, the Boston Globe, and the American Prospect.
Jennifer 8. Lee is a metropolitan reporter at The New York Times, where she has worked for many years. She harbors a deep obsession for Chinese food, the product of which is The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Twelve, 2008), which explores how Chinese food is all-American. Born and raised in New York City, she attended Hunter College Elementary and High School and is alumna of Harvard University.
Cosponsored by Singha Beer
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Writing Across Borders: Meena Alexander, Jessica Hagedorn and Kimiko Hahn
In conversation, chaired by Harold Augenbraum
Three Asian American women writers address questions of literary form and taboo, body and community, voice and text, dream and reality, and what it is to write across multiple borders.
Born in 1951 in Allahabad, India, Meena Alexander began writing poetry at ten years old. While her poetry might be her best-known work, her work spans a variety of literary genres. Her first book, a single lengthy poem, entitled The Bird's Bright Wing, was published in 1976 in Calcutta. Since then, Alexander has published seven volumes of poetry, including Illiterate Heart, winner of a 2002 PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk (2004), and Quickly Changing River (2008) all published by TriQuarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press. She is the editor of Indian Love Poems (Everyman's Library/ Knopf, 2005) and author of the memoir Fault Lines (Feminist Press 1993/2003). She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Kimiko Hahn was born in 1955 in Mt. Kisco, New York. She received an undergraduate degree in English and East Asian studies from the University of Iowa, and a master's degree in Japanese literature from Columbia University in 1984. She is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Narrow Road to the Interior (W.W. Norton, 2006); The Artist's Daughter (2002); Mosquito and Ant (1999); Volatile (Hanging Loose Press, 1999); and The Unbearable Heart (Kaya Press, 1995), which received an American Book Award. She is a Distinguished Professor in the English department at Queens College/CUNY and lives in New York.
Jessica Hagedorn was born in Manila in 1949 and moved to San Francisco when she was 14. She is a poet, playwright, and screenwriter whose works include three novels, Dream Jungle (2004), The Gangster of Love (Penguin, 1997), and Dogeaters (Penguin, 1991), and a collection of poetry and prose, Danger And Beauty (City Lights Books, 2002). She is the editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (Penguin, 1993) and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World (Penguin, 2004). Her screenplays include Fresh Kill, a feature-length film directed by Shu Lea Cheang, and four episodes of The Pink Palace, an animated series created for Oxygen TV. Among her plays are Dogeaters, adapted from the novel; Stairway to Heaven; and Most Wanted, a collaboration with composer Mark Bennett.
@ Segal Theater of the Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street
FREE
Reading: Jaed Coffin and Kao Kalia Yang
A night of Southeast Asian American memoir. Six years ago at the age of twenty-one, Jaed Muncharoen Coffin, a half-Thai American man, left New England to visit his mother's native village of Panomsarakram-thus fulfilling a familial obligation. A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants (Da Capo, 2008), part armchair travel, part coming-of-age story, is Coffin's debut that chronicles his journey. Driven to tell her family's story after her grandmother's death, The Latehomecomer (Coffee House Press, 2008) is Kao Kalia Yang's tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. The Latehomecomer is an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.
Jaed Coffin holds a B.A. in philosophy from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast Writing Program. A boxer, sea-kayaker, and lobster fisherman, he lives in Brunswick, Maine.
Born in a Thai refugee camp in 1980, Kao Kalia Yang immigrated to Minnesota when she was six. Together with her sister, she founded Words Wanted, a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has also recently completed a short film on the Hmong American refugee experience.
Cosponsored by Singha Beer
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Book Party: Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond
Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar
Hosted by W.W. Norton & Company and the Rubin Museum of Art with The Asian American Writers' Workshop
Multiple readings, book signing, DJ, bar, celebration.
Language for a New Century celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today in the East, bringing together an unprecedented selection of works by South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the Diaspora. Some, such as Bei Dao, Mahmoud Darwish, Michael Ondaatje, and Naomi Shihab Nye are acclaimed worldwide, but many more will be new to the reader. The collection includes over 400 unique voices - political and apolitical, monastic and erotic, established and emerging - that represent a wider artistic movement that challenges thousand-year-old traditions, broadening our notion of contemporary literature.
Language for a New Century has already attracted the attention of a numberof eminent writers and thinkers, including Howard Zinn, Yusef Komunyakaa and Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer, who writes, "This extraordinary, library-in-one volume: what a resource! The editors have boldly envisaged and compiled a beautiful achievement for world literature." Guggenheim Fellow and Los Angeles Times Book Award winning poet Carolyn ForchŽ has written"Language for a New Century [is] a field guide to the human condition in our time."
@ Rubin Museum
K2 Lounge
150 West 17th Street
Free and open to the public
Reading: R. Zamora Linmark and Nina Revoyr
Two writers read from their upcoming works. R. Zamora Linmark is the author of the acclaimed Rolling The R's (Kaya/Muae, 1997), and Prime Time Apparitions (Hanging Loose Press, 2005) as well as Leche (2008) and Evolution of A Sigh which is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press in April 2008. Nina Revoyr is the author of Necessary Hunger (St. Martin's Griffin, 1998) and Southland (Akashic Books, 2003), her latest, The Age of Dreaming (Akashic Books, 2008) about a Japanese silent film star in the early days of Hollywood is also forthcoming in April 2008.
R. Zamora Linmark is the author of the novel Rolling The R's, which he's adapted for the stage, and two poetry collections, Prime Time Apparitions and the just-published Evolution of a Sigh. A recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, his prose, poetry, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies in the U.S. and the Philippines. He has just completed a novel, Leche, the sequel to Rolling The R's, and is at work on another novel and a collaborative book project with Lisa Asagi, Justin Chin, and Lori Takayesu.
Nina Revoyr was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a white American father, and grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of Necessary Hunger, Southland, and The Age of Dreaming. Nina has been an Associate Faculty member at Antioch University, a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, and the Remsen Bird Visiting Writer at Occidental College. She has also worked for more than a decade in the fields of child welfare and public education. Nina lives in Los Angeles with her English Springer Spaniel, Russell.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Fall Calendar 2007 (past events)
Two Warriors: Mark Habana & Harry Ramos
Open mic. Poetry. Found words. Prose. Drama. Music by DJ Justin Woo. Please arrive early to sign up for the open mic.
Two Warriors is a New-York based poetry duo that found life at the Asian American Writers' Workshop in 2002 by bringing together stories of love, peace,
family, tribute and tradition in their writing. In an effort to break down barriers and provide a sense of home for everyone through their performances, Mark and
Harry aim to involve the crowd, interact with the audience, interpret stories, infuse emotion, and inspire hearts and minds. They have been blessed to perform in
venues throughout the NYC tri-state area, including Five Points, Galapagos Art Space, Urban Juke Joint, Wazzup Cafe, Charlie's Den, Tasty Coco, Je Bon Lounge and
Fusion Ti, as well as locations in Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. You can contact them at twowarriors.com.
Justin Woo loves DJing and primarily mixes house and trance. He is the resident DJ for the Poetic Voices reading at the Iron Monkey in Jersey City, NJ,
as well as mobile DJing events. Justin also specializes in collaborative, political, cross-disciplinary performance. He has co-written, co-directed, and performed
in four spoken word theatre productions that have debuted in New York City and Rutgers University. He is also a teaching artist for SlamChops, an educational poetry
program for youth at the Bowery Poetry Club. His most recent project, New Street Poets, appeared as part of the 2007 New York Fringe Festival.
Thanks to Singha Beer for sponsoring this event!
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
An Evening with Michael Ondaatje
6pm (VIP cocktail reception), 7:30pm (Reading)
In partnership with The Consulate General of Canada - New York, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Singha Beer and Moti Hasson Gallery.
 One of the most exciting voices in contemporary literature, Michael Ondaatje reads from his favorite works. A stunning fusion of jazz rhythms, film montage technique, and profoundly beautiful language, encompassing memoir, poetry, and film, revealing a passion for defying conventional form.
Born in Sri Lanka, the former Ceylon, of Indian/Dutch ancestry, Ondaatje went to school in England and then moved to Canada. From the memoir of his childhood, Running in the Family, to his Governor-General's Award-winning book of poetry, There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning To Do, Ondaatje casts a spell over his readers. And having won the British Commonwealth's highest honor - the Booker Prize - he has taken his rightful place as a contemporary literary treasure. In 2000, Ondaatje was awarded the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Governor General's Award, and the Giller Prize for his novel Anil's Ghost. His transcendent novel, The English Patient, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. He is the author of four collections of poetry including The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. His works of fiction include In the Skin of the Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, and most recently Divisadero (Knopf, 2007).
@ Moti Hasson Gallery
535 West 25th Street
(btwn 10th and 11th Aves)
Chelsea arts gallery district, New York City
For tickets, call the Workshop at 212.494.0061.
6pm: Private VIP cocktail party ($100)
7:30pm: General Public reading, audience Q&A and booksigning ($15)
VIP and general tickets may be purchased over the telephone with a credit card through the Workshop only. Please call 212-494-0061. Tickets will be
held at the door under your name. A limited number of student tickets are available for purchase in-person, in advance with current ID for $7 at the
Workshop (Tuesday - Friday, 12 noon - 7 pm). There will be no tickets available at the door. All proceeds from the event support the Workshop.
How To Get Your Poetry Published (and live a life as a poet)
Cosponsored by Poets & Writers
Wouldn't quit the day job--but you love poetry nevertheless. A panel discussion with Alice Quinn, (Poetry Society of America/The New
Yorker), Deborah Garrison (poet/Alfred A. Knopf editor), and Joseph Legaspi (poet/Kundiman codirector), moderated by Quang Bao on
getting your poems and manuscripts edited and published. A frank conversation about creating a life as a poet, including residencies, mentoring,
anthology projects, self-publishing, MFA programs, teaching and public readings. A conversation about the mechanics of getting published--and expert,
friendly advice about maintaining a life in the professional world of poetry.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
"Miss" a 2-act play by Quang Bao
A staged reading, directed by Loy Arcenas
Quang Bao's work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Threepenny Review, The New York Times and National Public Radio. He is the coeditor of Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America, and current director of The Workshop. He has just completed his first novel.
Loy Arcenas' recent directing credits include Warren Leight's No Foreigners Beyond This Point, Betsy Howie's Callie's Tally, and Jon Marans' Old Wicked Songs. He also directed the Ma-Yi Theatre production of Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio, for which he received an Obie Award in Sustained Excellence of Set Design.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
"My Friend Has Come" by Toshiro Suzue
A staged reading, directed by James Yaegashi
A hot summer day somewhere in nowhere Japan. A friend waits. A friend comes. A friend leaves. This simple story of two friends humorously and poignantly reminds
us of the sweetness and pain of connecting with another human being.
Written early in his career by Toshiro Suzue, the forerunner in the "quiet theater" movement in Japan, this play won the OMS Drama Prize, the first of many prestigious
awards the playwright has received. The play is expected to have its American premier in 2009.
Toshiro Suzue is a playwright/director/actor based in Kyoto, Japan. He is the recipient of numerous major Japanese theater awards including: The OMS Drama Prize for
Tomodachi ga Kita (My Friend Has Come); The Kishida Kunio Drama Award for Kami o Kakiageru (Fireflies); and the Japanese government's National Arts Festival
Grand Prize for Uchu no Tabi, Semi ga Naite (Travel Through Space, the Cicadas Cry). He is also the co-founder and publisher of the playwriting magazine, LEAF,
with fellow playwrights, Masataka Matsuda and Hideo Tsuchida. Suzue's plays have been translated into English, German, Russian and Indonesian.
James Yaegashi is a classically-trained theater artist based in New York. His acting work has been seen on and off Broadway, including the original productions of
John Guare's A Few Stout Individuals, Julia Cho's Durango, Richard Greenberg's A Naked Girl on the Appian Way and Take Me Out (2003 Tony for Best
Play). He has also worked in major regional theaters across the U.S. such as South Coast Repertory, Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Long Wharf Theatre, among others.
James is also a translator, and has translated several Japanese plays into English and American plays into Japanese, including My Friend Has Come, which he will
direct in 2009.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
The Daddy Project
Four monologues by Mary Beth Brooker, D.W. Gibson, Anoo Siddiqi and Tracy K. Smith about their relationships with their fathers,
performed by Nandita Chandra, Craig Edwards, Mark Gowers, and Derek Lucci. Directed by Dawn Akemi Saito.
Mary Beth Brooker Mary Beth Brooker, writer, visual artist, mother, lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with her husband and their five year old daughter.
DW Gibson currently serves as Executive Director of the Ledig House International Writer's Colony in Hudson, New York. As a writer, his work has been published in
various literary journals. He spent some time as a script editor and writer on documentaries for PBS, A&E Television Network, and MSNBC. Some of his credits include "Eugene
O'Neill Biography"; "Lost Generation Biography"; "The Hate Network"; "Inside Alcoholics Anonymous." He has just finished a novel.
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi is a writer, architect, and historian working in New York. She has written extensively on architectural and urban
issues and recently contributed an essay to the Asian American Writers' Workshop anthology Topography of War, exploring issues of spatial
memory and architectural experience in memoir. This is her first piece written for the stage.
Tracy K. Smith is the author of The Body's Question (Graywolf, 2003), which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her second book, Duende (Graywolf 2007), received the 2006 James Laughlin Prize of the Academy of American Poets. She teaches at Princeton University.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$10 tickets in advance at 212.494.0061
$15 at the door
The 10th Annual Asian American Literary Awards
Celebrating a decade of excellence in Asian American Literature.
Congratulations to the 2007 Asian American Literary Award winners, Linh Dinh, Amitav Ghosh, and Samrat Upadhyay.
Presentation of winning books, cocktail reception, booksigning and surprise announcement of the Members' Choice Workshop Award!
For winners' bios and list of Members' Choice Award finalists click here.
@ Housing Works Bookstore
126 Crosby Street (btwn Houston and Prince Streets)
New York City
$12 general, $10 members, Free for students with ID
Thanks to Singha Beer for sponsoring this event.
Approaches to Asian American Literary Anthologies with Luis Francia
A free workshop for teachers of high school seniors and first-year college students. Complimentary copies of Workshop anthologies with teachers' guides. Call 212.494.0061 to register.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
FREE
Summer Calendar 2007 (past events)
Book Launch: Lost Men by Brian Leung
In his debut novel, Lost Men, (Shaye Areheart Books, 2007) Brian Leung explores cultural identity, the meaning of family, and the pressures of fate as
characters confront their complex pasts. Westen Chan vividly remembers the day he lost both his parents - his mother to a car accident, and his father, who,
unable to come to terms with the death of Westen's mother, leaves him to live with his aunt and uncle. Westen struggles to understand his identity, his place
in the world, and why his father, after so many years, has sent him a letter inviting him on a trip to China - a promise that was made
to Westen when he was a child.
Reading followed by booksigning and a reception with music by New York based alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, who will present excerpts from
his most recent album Codebook with longtime collaborator bassist Carlo de Rosa.
Co-sponsored with Artists & Audiences Exchange, a NYFA public program
Brian Leung's story collection, World Famous Love Acts, won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and the Asian American Literary Award, was a
Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and was chosen as an Editor's Pick in Entertainment Weekly. His work has appeared in Story, Crazyhorse, Indiana
Review, Grain, Gulf Coast, Kinesis, Mid-American Review, Salt Hill, Gulf Stream, and numerous other periodicals.
He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University and lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he is an assistant professor at the University of Louisville.
Lost Men is his first novel.
Guggenheim fellow Rudresh Mahanthappa is one of the most innovative young musicians and composers in jazz today. Named a Rising Star of the alto saxophone by
the Downbeat International Critics Poll for the past four years, Rudresh has incorporated the culture of his Indian ancestry to create a truly groundbreaking
artistic vision. He is a 2006 Artist Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Txt Me: Identity and Community Summer Youth Writing Workshop Performance
Participants of our summer youth writing workshop will give a reading performance at The Asian American Writers' Workshop!
In this eight-day workshop, participants have explored the use of fiction writing, creative journalism, and poetry through one of the newest mediums for
writers: the blog. Ten young writers will present a writing piece told through their internet avatars, characters they have created just for this workshop.
Fittingly, this event coincides with the Blogiversary - the mark of a decade since the first blogger.
Please come for this live reading with ten amazing young writers!
Readings by: Jessica Bolandrina, Lauriz Bonzon, Wei Lie Chen, Wing Lam Cheung, Pau Font de Rubinat, Ivana Ng,
Tasnim Shamma, Mari Jo Umali, Toni Watson and Matthew Yee.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
Free
IN THE HOUSE: A reading by friends of the Workshop
Curated by Nicholas Chung, Mrigaa Sethi and Kaori Suzuki
Cosponsored by Kundiman
Continuing our support for emerging writers, we are excited to present a showcase of poets and fiction writers from our workshops, with Nicholas Chung,
Ilisa Lam, Mrigaa Sethi, Antonius Wiriajada and Helena Zhang. See them here first before they get too hot to touch!
Nicholas Chung lives in a small room but won't use big words.
When she is not writing poetry Ilisa Lam writes about technology, space and weapons as cultural anthropological phenomena, the subject of her doctoral
dissertation at CUNY Graduate Center. Ilisa regrets being unable to attend the reading. Her work will be read by Kaori Suzuki.
Mrigaa Sethi enjoys feeding young people a little more than actually teaching them. For grown-ups, she throws raucous parties and, in the
mornings-after, she counts syllables at the breakfast table.
Antonius Wiriadjaja was born in Jakarta and raised in Boston. He received a BA from Hampshire College, where he absorbed the taxonomy of environmentally
friendly household products from his eco-conscious peers. His interests include neurons, literature and public nudity.
Helena Zhang is a person. She has lived in many houses.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit
The Workshop is pleased to support the 4th Biennial APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit! The APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit is the largest national gathering of
APIA spoken word artists, performers, writers, community leaders and arts educators. It is a three-day event with a mission to challenge the often peripheral and
passive roles the artist is branded within the APIA community and the arts community at-large and to acknowledge the arts as a critical, elemental component in
building, empowering and transforming tool for our community and our selves.
Friday: Family Showcase @ the Workshop
Saturday: Summit Workshops and Panels @ University Settlement Community Houston Center, Community Showcase @ Judson Memorial Church
Sunday: Family and Community Meetings @University Settlement Community Houston Center
Click here for more information and to register.
Family Showcase: Friday, August 3rd, 7pm @ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
Entrance Included with registration. Note this event is closed to the general public. You must register to attend and read!
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Winter/Spring Calendar 2007 (past events)
PEN World Voices: World City, NY
 Authors of both fiction and nonfiction discuss how New York features in
their work and ponder the endless and mysterious allure of what is
arguably the world's cultural capital. Featuring Jorge Franco, Eduardo
Lago and Suketu Mehta; moderated by Connie Rosenblum of the New York
Times.
Co-sponsored with PEN World Voices 2007: The New York Festival of International Literature. For more information about the festival, click here
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street , 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
Free
Jorge Franco (Colombia) was awarded the Pedro G—mez Valderrama National Narrative prize for his first collection of short stories, and his first novel won the Ciudad de Pereira National Novel Competition. His novel, Rosario Tijeras, was awarded the Hammett International Prize and has been translated into fourteen languages and successfully adapted into a film. His most recent novel is Melodrama.
Eduardo Lago (Spain/United States) is the author of a collection of short stories; a memoir; and Call Me Brooklyn, his first novel, which won the 2006 Nadal Prize in Spain. He is the director of Instituto Cervantes New York.
Suketu Mehta is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. His first book, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, won the Kiriyama Prize, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Mehta's work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Granta, and Harper's among many other publications. Mehta was born in Calcutta and raised in Bombay and New York.
Connie Rosenblum is the author of Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce and the editor of New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times. She is the editor of the New York Times City Section.
Reading: Tinling Choong and Anchee Min
In Firewife: A Story of Fire and Water (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2007), Tinling Choong draws on the ancient Chinese creation legend of Nuwa and the battle between
fire and water to give a modern story of how women are connected throughout time. Anchee Min's new book, The Last Empress (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), continues the story of
Tzu Hsi, or Empress Orchid, offering an extensively researched, highly revisionist portrait of a critical female figure in modern Chinese history.
 Tinling Choong was born and raised in Malaysia. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College, is working toward her PH.D. In East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale
University and she is at work on a novel. She lives in Vermont.
 Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957. At seventeen she was sent to a labor collective, where a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio recruited her to work as
a movie actress. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Red Azalea, recounts her experience during the Cultural Revolution, a period she revists in fictional form in her national
bestselling Becoming Madame Mao. With the internationally bestselling novel Empress Orchid, Min continued her project of offering extensively researched, highly
revisionist accounts of critical female figures in modern Chinese history. Min's new book, The Last Empress, continues this masterful revisionist work.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street , 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Kaya! Fundraiser
Curated and hosted by Ishle Yi Park
A night of music and poetry featuring Tina Chang, Lisa Chen, Luis Francia, Kimiko Hahn, Cathy Park Hong, Ed Lin, Pat Rosal, Thad Rutkowski, and Lisa Yun. Music by DJ Mas; musical guest Vudou Soul. Limited open mic-- please arrive early to sign in. Proceeds to go to Kaya Press, a nonprofit independent publisher of Asian/diasporic literature and culture.
cosponsored by Lady Leisure, Blue Rabbit Productions, Sulu Series
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
New York City
$10 - $20, sliding scale
Tina Chang, author of Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books), has received numerous awards from the Academy of American Poets, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, among many others. She is currently co-editing Contemporary Voices of the East: An Anthology of Poems to be published by W.W. Norton in 2008.
Luis H. Francia is the author of Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago (Kaya), a collection of poetry, Museum of Absences (Meritage Press), and co-editor, with Angel Velasco Shaw, of Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999 (NYU Press).
Since her Kaya book, The Unbearable Heart, Kimiko Hahn has published several collections, including The Narrow Road To The Interior (W.W. Norton)Ña book subverting the Japanese classic genres of zuihitsu and tanka. She is a Disintinguished Professor at the new MFA program at Queens College/The City University of New York.
Cathy Park Hong's first book of poetry was Translating Mo'Um (Kaya), and her book Dance Dance Revolution (W.W. Norton) is forthcoming. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Ed Lin's first novel Waylaid was published by Kaya in 2002. Kaya will publish his second novel, This Is a Bust, this fall.
Mas has been a disciple of music for the majority of his life. He is honored to be spinning tonight for Kaya and at the AAWW, which is one of the places where it all started.
Ishle Yi Park is a Korean American woman who is the Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. Her first book, The Temperature of This Water (Kaya), is the winner of three awards: the PEN America Beyond Margins Award for Outstanding Writers of Color, the Members' Choice Award of the Asian American Literary Awards, and an Honorable Mention from the A.A.A.S. (Association of Asian American Studies).
Patrick Rosal is the author of two full length-collections of poetry, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (Persea Books), which won the Asian American Writers Workshop Members' Choice Award, and most recently My American Kundiman.
Thaddeus Rutkowski grew up in central Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Cornell University and The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the innovative novels Roughhouse (Kaya) and Tetched (Palari Publishing); both books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award.
Lisa Yun is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Binghamton and co-founder of the Asian and Asian American Studies Program. Her book, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese and Africans of Cuba, is forthcoming with Temple University Press. She has been the recipient of a NYFA fellowship for her poetry, which has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals.
Book Launch: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
 In recent years, there has been unprecedented attention paid to the Third World and the economic and social success and failures of its post-colonial
nations. Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations (The New Press, 2007), discusses the history of the developing world and its current struggles.
Vijay Prashad is Professor and Director of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is on the board of the Center for Third World
Organizing, United For a Fair Economy, and the National Priorities Project. In addition, Prashad writes a monthly column for Frontline, India and contributes
to Counterpunch. Prashad's most recent books include The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World and Dispatches from Latin
America: Experiments Against Neoliberalism. He is the author of ten other books, including Karma of Brown Folk and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting,
both of which were chosen by the Village Voice as books of the year.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street , 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
A Celebration of Poetry with Cave Canem
 The Asian American and African American communities gather for a night of brilliant poetry and music. Readings by Elizabeth Alexander, Justin Chin, Kimiko Hahn, Linda Susan Jackson, Gregory Pardlo, Vijay Seshadri and the musical stylings of Patrick Rosal in collaboration with Aracelis Girmay. Curated by Tina Chang and Tracy K.
Smith.
Elizabeth Alexander's collections of poetry include Antebellum Dream Book (Graywolf Press, 2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990). Her poems, short stories, and critical writing have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post, and her work is anthologized in over twenty collections. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago, and the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks.
Justin Chin is the author of Harmless Medicine and Bite Hard, and three collections of essays, Burden of Ashes, Attack of the Man-eating Lotus
Blossoms, and Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks. His newest collection is Gutted (Manic D Press).
Kimiko Hahn's seven books of poems include The Unbearable Heart, which received an American Book Award, and most recently, The Narrow Road to the Interior.
In this new volume, she collects work inspired by the Japanese forms, tanka and zuihitsu; the title, itself, comes from Basho's famous poetic journal, Okunohosomichi.
She is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA program at Queens College, The City University of New York.
Linda Susan Jackson's first collection of poems, What Yellow Sounds Like, was a finalist in the 2006 National Poetry Series Competition and will be published
by Tia Chucha Press in Spring 2007. She has published two chapbooks, Vitelline Blues and A History of Beauty. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard
Review, Brilliant Corners, Asheville Poetry Review, Gathering Ground, Heliotrope, Los Angeles Review, Rivendell, Warpland,
and Brooklyn Review 21 among other journals and has been featured on From the Fishouse audio archive. She is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Chair of the
English Department at Medgar Evers College/City University of New York and a Cave Canem graduate fellow.
Gregory Pardlo is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His
poems, reviews and translations have appeared in Calalloo, Lyric, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, Volt, Black Issues
Book Review and on National Public Radio. He teaches creative writing at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, and lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant with his wife and daughter.
His manuscript, Totem, was chosen by Brenda Hillman for the American Poetry Review/ Honickman First Book Prize and will be published Sept. 2007.
Vijay Seshadri's collections of poems include James Laughlin Award winner The Long Meadow (Graywolf Press, 2004) and Wild Kingdom (1996). He currently
teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Patrick Rosal is the author of two full length-collections of poetry, My American Kundiman and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive. The closest he got to conservatory was secretly struggling with first species counterpoint during the graveyard shift of his second job at 19. He once jammed with Max Roach and was terrible.
Aracelis Girmay writes poetry, fiction, & essays. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she earned degrees from Connecticut College & NYU. Girmay is a Cave Canem Fellow & former Watson Fellow. Her poems have been published in Callaloo, Bellevue Literary Review, Indiana Review, and Ploughshares, among others. Her book of poems, Teeth, will be published by Curbstone Press this summer.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street , 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Uptown/Downtown
Curated and hosted by Helena Zhang and Brynn Saito
  Let the summer begin! Join us for an evening of readings by ten emerging writers. Five poets from New York University and five from Sarah Lawrence College share their work in a dynamic bridging of two creative communities.
Brynn Saito / M. Rebekah Otto / Ivanna Yi / Brandon C. Dumont / Diana Alvarez / Allyson Paty / Beth Onusko / Carson Donnelly / R. Perry Ivey / Helena Zhang
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
New York City
Fall Calendar 2006 (past events)
The Workshop's 15th Anniversary Party!
Come to our anniversary party! Celebrating 15 years of literary journeys, poetic revelry, prose persuasions, and love and support for
Asian American literature. Meet and mingle with writers and artists to raise a toast to the Workshop. Presentation of The Lifetime Achievement Award
to Maxine Hong Kingston by Jessica Hagedorn and the announcement of the 2006 Asian American literary award winners will begin at 8:15pm.
Cosponsored by
Wine courtesy of Mrs. Peggy Furth of Chalk Hill Winery
Water courtesy of Borjomi Water
6pm - 7pm, VIP reception
@ Cendrillion
45 Mercer Street (btwn Grand and Broome Street)
$1000 tickets in advance, please click here for details
7pm - 9pm, General reception
@ 
35 Wooster Street
(btwn Grand & Broome Street)
Click here for directions
We are requesting a $10 donation from everyone who wants to attend.
Please pre-pay using a credit card. It will guarantee your admission because the event will likely sell out.
Please call 212.494.0061
The Woman Warrior @ 30
Cosponsored with the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program & Institute at NYU and The
National Book Foundation. This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the New York City Dept of Cultural Affairs.
 Please join us in acknowledging one of the most
important novels of the 20th century. A daylong event commemorating Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, comprised of readings,
panels, and reflections with speakers including David Eng, Jack Tchen, Fay Chiang and a roster of other scholars and artists. The tribute
culminates in a performance at the Workshop.
Stuyvesant High School
345 Chambers Street
(btwn River Terrace & N. End Avenue)
9:30am, Reading and conversation with Maxine Hong Kingston
Open only to Stuyvesant High School students
 NYU Conference: Panel Discussions
NYU Kimmel Center
Shorin Performance Studio, 8th floor
60 Washington Square South
(at the corner of LaGuardia Place)
1pm - 1:30pm, Introduction with Jack Tchen, Quang Bao and David
Eng
1:30pm - 2:45pm, The Woman Warrior, Literary Forms, and Other Genres:
Biography and Autobiography, Folk Tales, Performance. Moderated by Cyrus Patell, with Fay Chiang, Sunita
Mukhi and Karen Shimakawa
2:50pm - 4pm, Women and The Woman Warrior. Moderated by Christine Balance, with Luis Francia, Gloria Jacobs,
Sabrina Margherita and Kate Rigg
4:05pm - 5:15pm Politics, Immigration, and The Woman Warrior. Moderated by Crystal Parikh, with Susana
Lei'ataua, Sheridan Prasso, Svati P. Shah and Ellen D. Wu
The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
7pm, 30th Anniversary Tribute to The Woman Warrior and launch
party for the forthcoming anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of
Peace (KOA Books) edited by Kingston. With readings by Quang
Bao, Earll Kingston, Maxine Hong Kingston and Chun Yu.
Followed by reception and book sales
$10 suggested donation
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts was published in 1976 and won the National Book Critics' Circle Award. According to the
Modern Language Association, it is the most commonly taught text in modern university education. She has earned additional awards, including the National Book Award for China Men,
the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the National Humanities Medal. Kingston most
recently edited the anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (KOA Books).
Book Launch: Topography of War
Cosponsored by
Religions for Peace, a growing global network of inter-religious councils and groups, harnesses the power of cooperation among the world's faith communities
to help stop war, end poverty, and protect the earth.
 Join editors Andrea Louie and Johnny Lew for a
special launch event to mark the publication of the Workshop's latest anthology, Topography of War: Asian American Essays, a collection of creative
nonfiction works that examine the many ways in which war remains part of personal histories as well as the collective memory of Asian America.
Special Guest: Channapha Khamvongsa, project director of Legacies of War. Legacies of War was created to
raise awareness about the history of the Vietnam War-era bombing in Laos, to provide space for healing the wounds of war and to create greater hope for a future
of peace. Founded in 2004, Legacies of War uses a multifaceted approach, including visual and performance arts, to tell the stories of the Laotian people and
their enduring survival of the bombing in Laos and the lingering effects of deadly cluster bombs.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street , 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation
Speed Dating Round 2: Short Story Clinic
Cosponsored with 
Short fiction has been wildly popular at times in American literature and a chosen first form
for emerging writers. In Speed Dating Round 2, short story writers are paired up one-on-one with editors. Personal feedback, professional advice and criticism make this a valuable opportunity for writers to have a look into the publishing market for the short story.
To participate:
1) Send your short story (25-page limit, double-spaced) to desk@aaww.org. Include your name, contact information, and a short bio. Write "Speed Dating" on the subject line.
Deadline to submit is Tuesday, October 17th.
2) If your story is chosen, the Workshop will forward it to the appropriate editor who will read your work in advance and be prepared to offer personal feedback. Payment is due upon acceptance.
3) Come on time to your assigned half-hour meeting and ask whatever you want. If you are unable to attend the event in person, but would like to participate, we will be accepting phone appointments also.
Featuring editors:
Stacey Barney (Kensington Books)
Lexy Bloom (Random House/Vintage/Anchor)
Larissa Dooley (Riverhead)
Kendra Harpster (Penguin/Viking)
Christopher Jackson (Random House/Spiegel and Grau)
Radhika Jones (The Paris Review)
Anne McPeak (The Hudson Review)
John Parsley (St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books)
Jennifer Pooley (HarperCollins/William Morrow)
Anjali Singh (Houghton Mifflin)
Jill Schoolman (Archipelago Books)
$65 general, $50 members. Accepted on a rolling basis until filled. The Workshop will do the pairing. Open to individuals from all different levels of writing, ethnic backgrounds and literary interests.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
Stacey Barney, an editor at Dafina/Kensington Books, has held posts in both adult and children's book publishing, beginning her career at Lee & Low Books, a
multicultural children's book publisher. She then worked at Farrar, Straus and Giroux with such talented new writers as Chris Abani and Lisa Dierbeck. At
Amistad/HarperCollins, she published LA Times Bestselling author Tamara T. Gregory's Passport Diaries as well as acclaimed author Ronin Ro's latest,
Raising Hell: The Reign, Ruin, and Redemption of Run-D.M.C. and the bestselling This Voice In My Heart by Gilbert Tuhabonye. At Dafina/Kensington,
Stacey is looking for Christian fiction, young adult, pop culture, and narrative nonfiction that speaks to the themes of education, race, class, gender and
immigration -- the outsider's voice. She is also very interested in family stories, memoirs, women's fiction, and international fiction. She will launch a young
adult line for the Dafina list in the fall.
Lexy Bloom is an associate editor at Vintage/Anchor, part of the Knopf publishing group at Random House, where she works on both paperback reprints and
original titles. She has worked with numerous authors in paperback, including Edwidge Danticat, James Salter, Mary Gaitskill, John Banville, Helen Oyeyemi, Thisbe
Nissen, Richard McCann, and Tova Mirvis. She also works with Natsuo Kirino, Joshua Henkin, Danit Brown, Tod Wodicka, and Mia Kirshner, among others, whose original works are forthcoming from Knopf, Pantheon and Vintage/Anchor in 2007. Before coming to Vintage/Anchor, she was US Books Editor for Granta Books.
Larissa Dooley has worked with numerous award-winning and bestselling writers such as George Saunders, Steven Johnson, Erik Reece, John Hodgman, and Dan
Crane in her position at Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group. Her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Boldtype and Poets & Writers.
Kendra Harpster began her literary career at Doubleday in 1999 where she worked with writers such as Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead and Aimee Bender,
published fiction by Shari Goldhagen (Family and Other Accidents), and Rod Liddle (Too Beautiful for You), and non-fiction by David Rakoff (Don't
Get Too Comfortable), and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Live Strong). Now an editor at Viking, her list includes both literary and commercial fiction.
Her upcoming titles for Viking/Penguin include Tana French's In the Woods, Danielle Ganek's Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, Susan Vreeland's
Luncheon of the Boating Party and Kim Edwards' short story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King.
Christopher Jackson is Executive Editor at Spiegel & Grau, a new division of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group at Random House, Inc.
He has worked with numerous bestselling and award-winning authors, from Victor Lavalle and Edwidge Danticat to David Corn and Jack Weatherford. His
authors at Spiegel & Grau include Warren St. John, Matt Taibbi, Ta-Nehesi Coates, and Adam Mansbach.
Radhika Jones is the managing editor of The Paris Review, and her interview with Peter Carey appeared in the magazine's summer issue. She is a
frequent contributor to Bookforum and the author of introductions to Barnes & Noble Classics editions of Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and
A Room with a View.
s Anne McPeak is the associate editor of The Hudson Review. She received a B.A. in literature from Bard College, with a concentration in writing.
Previous to joining the magazine, she was an assistant at the Irene Skolnick Literary Agency. Her fiction and book reviews have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail.
John Parsley is an Editor at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, where he acquires and edits literary and commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction.
He is also the founding editor of LOST Magazine, a monthly online magazine that features fiction and nonfiction and has
published writers including Tom Bissell, Wayne Curtis, Marilyn Johnson, Peter Orner, Mary Roach, Floyd Skloot, and Robert Sullivan.
Jennifer Pooley is an editor at William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, where she began her career in 1998. She loves discovering strong new
voices in literary and commercial fiction and has acquired such debut novels as K. L. Cook's The Girl From Charnelle, Catherine Hanrahan's Lost Girls and
Love Hotels, and Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life. Her nonfiction acquisition interests are eclectic and include serious narrative nonfiction, humor,
history, science, and memoir that deliver an unforgettable armchair experience, such as Marjorie Hart's Summer At Tiffany (forthcoming) and Alison and
Melissa Houtte's Alligators, Old Mink and New Money, and the occasional whimsical gift title with a pop culture slant, such as Amy Allen's This Little
Piggy Went to Prada: Nursery Rhymes for the Blahnik Brigade (forthcoming) and David C. Barnette's The Offical Guide to Christmas in the South: Or, If You
Can't Fry It, Spraypaint It Gold. She publishes the work of such authors as John Barlow, Christoper Bram, Maud Casey, Emily Franklin, Lolita Files, Lisa Jewell,
Ami McKay, and Leslie Pietrzyk, among others.
Anjali Singh began her career in publishing in 1996, when she landed a job as a scout of American and Canadian books for foreign publishers. Before
joining Houghton Mifflin in 2006, she worked as an editor at Vintage and Pantheon Books, where she sought out American and international writers of literary fiction,
travel, memoir, and narrative journalism. Her authors included Nuha al-Radi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Diana Abu-Jaber, Nadeem Aslam and Valerie Martin. While there,
she also carved out a niche publishing graphic novels, among them Marjane Satrapi's memoirs of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, Persepolis
and Persepolis 2 (which she also translated from the French), David B.'s Epileptic, Joann Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat and Jessica Abel's La
Perdida.
Jill Schoolman founded Archipelago Books in 2003 after working with Seven Stories Press for four years in the editorial department. She graduated from
Yale University with a BA in Literature in '92, and studied English literature at Oxford University in '89-'90. She worked as an assistant film editor before she
entered the publishing world. (She also delivered pizzas on mopeds in Paris for several months.) She was selected to participate in the French-American
Foundation-sponsored editors' exchange program in '99 as well as the German Book Office-sponsored editors' trip to Germany in '03. Archipelago Books is a
non-profit press devoted to classic and contemporary international literature.
The Daddy Project
Cosponsored by New York Theater Workshop
In literature (and perhaps in other art forms) fathers receive less attention than mothers. If men are raised to be the strong and silent type, how do
we know who they are and how do they shape and challenge our own personas? A night of four performance pieces presented by professional actors, authored by Jesse
Cameron Alick, Quang Bao, Christopher Murray and Joshua Pushkin. An intimate look at the relationship between men and their dads.
Featuring:
Lazy Man's Load by Christopher Murray, performed by Drew Hildebrand
The Scorpion and the Fox by Jesse Cameron Alick, performed by Craig Alan Edwards
Christopher Columbus, Senior by Quang Bao, performed by Hoon Lee
The Pink Caballero by Joshua Pushkin, performed by Chad Corbitt
Directed by Loy Arcenas
 Jesse Cameron Alick is the Associate Artistic Director for Subjective Theatre Company and as the Associate Producer for Smokin Word Productions. He is the author the plays Sleep Awake and Come Back to Me, and a book of poetry, How to Reach a State of No Wind in Just Under a Year. His poetry has also appeared in the anthology The Full Spectrum (Random House), A&U magazine, The Errorist and Inspired by a Dream.
 Quang Bao's work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Threepenny Review, The New York Times and National Public Radio. He is the coeditor of Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America, current director of The Workshop and a Revson Fellow at Columbia University. He teaches creative writing at Cooper Union and has just completed his first novel.
 Joshua Pushkin completed his BS in Human Development and a Masters in Public Administration at Cornell Univerity. He is currently the Director of Development for Cable Positive, an HIV/AIDS action organization dedicated to educating the public about the disease through the medium of cable television.
 Christopher Murray's poetry has appeared recently in Windy City Times, Bloom, the Soft Skull Press anthology Bend, Don't Shatter and on NPR as read by Garrision Keilllor as part of The Writer's Almanac. This year, Christopher was named a Charles H. Revson Fellow at Columbia University.
Loy Arcenas' recent directing credits include Warren Leight's No Foreigners Beyond This Point, Betsy Howie's Callie's Tally, and Jon Marans' Old Wicked Songs. He is currently rehearsing Mac Wellman's 2 September at the Flea Theatre. He also directed the Ma-Yi Theatre production of Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio, for which he received an Obie Award in Sustained Excellence of Set Design.
Chad Corbitt is a student at Brooklyn College. He sends his love to Kelly, Laurie, and Matty.
Craig Alan Edwards has appeared on television in Law & Order, All My Children, As The World Turns and Spenser: For Hire; and on film in Sweet & Lowdown, Lip Service, The Opposite Sex, All The Wrong Places, Run Of The House, and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop. Craig has written and performed his own one-man show, The Man in Room 306, a fictional account of Dr. King's last night in Memphis, and has appeared in New York productions of Waiting For My Man; (DR2 Theatre), Box (2003 NY International Fringe Festival), A Last Dance for Sybil (with Ruby Dee) and Love's Labor's Lost. Craig has his own performance company, KING ALIVE! The Dream Lives.
Drew Hildebrand will appear later this month in the New York premiere of Mac Wellman's 2 September at the Flea Theater. Also at the Flea he has performed in A.R. Gurney's Screen Play, Drums In The Night, and Ashley Montana Goes Ashore In The Caicos with Bebe Neuwirth. His other credits include The Front Page (Long Wharf Theater) and Gary Winter's The Impotent General (Brick Theater). He is a former US Naval Officer, and a veteran of the conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He has trained at Cornell University and BADA.
Hoon Lee is originally from the Boston area where he began his performing career as a singer and musician. Since moving to New York, he has appeared on Broadway in Flower Drum Song (originated the role of Chao), Urinetown, Pacific Overtures; other New York productions include American Hwangap (Lark Theatre), SIDES: The Fear is Real... (Culture Project and P.S.122), Back from the Front (NY International Fringe Festival), The King & I (Papermill Playhouse), and Hot Stuff High! (Mr. Miyagi's Theatre Company). He has also appeared on television and in film in Sex and the City, Saving Face, and We Own the Night. He continues to perform in bands and is currently recording a new solo project. He is a graduate of Harvard University.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$10, tickets in advance are encouraged as seats are limited
Writing Filipino America
Curated by Luis Francia
The year 2006 marks the centennial of Filipino immigration to the United States. Readings by Fil-Am writers Lisa Ascalon, Gina Apostol,
Marlon Unas Esguerra, Luis Francia, Sarah Gambito and Tai Yo. Honoring those who preceded them, reflecting the creative literature penned by
generations of Filipino and Filipino-Americas. In conjunction with "Moving Archipelago: A Century of Writing Filipino America," a landmark act of remembrance and a
weekend conference at New York University. For more information, click here.
@ the Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue
$5 suggested donation
The 9th Annual Asian American Literary Awards
Since 1998, the Workshop has been recognizing excellence in Asian American literature through our annual awards ceremony. Join us in making this
year's event the best yet. Here's to throwing prose, cocktails, and well-deserved kudos into the shaker and seeing what comes out, awarding the best in
Asian American fiction, poetry, and nonfiction of 2005. And since Workshop members serve as the fuel to our literary fire, we are pleased to recognize their
voices in our Members' Choice Award. Ceremony and awards presentation with authors, followed by booksigning and reception.
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation by Jeff Chang, (Picador USA) Nonfiction.
Presented by Greg Tate.
Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, (Grove Press) Fiction.
Presented by Brian Leung.
Mad Science in Imperial City by Shanxing Wang, (Futurepoem books) Poetry.
Presented by Suji Kwock Kim.
With special guest speaker Sudhir Venkatesh
And surprise announcement of Members' Choice Award winner!
Members' Choice Award finalists:
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li, (Random House) Fiction
Real Karaoke People by Ed Bok Lee, (New Rivers Press) Poetry
Tetched: A Novel in Fractals by Thaddeus Rutkowski, (Behler Publications) Fiction
@ The Asia Society
725 Park Ave at 70th Street
New York City
$12 general, $10 members, students free
Tickets at 212.494.0061
Summer Calendar 2006 (past events)
New York Minutes: A Storytelling Contest
$100 cash prize + one year free membership to the Workshop
Participants Wanted Now!
Have you ever ...
Lived with 47 roommates in a studio apartment?
Been sexually harrassed during your internship?
Thought you were smarter than your boss?
Gone on the date from hell?
Stolen a chandelier from an open house at a loft you could never afford?
Then, we want to hear about it. You get 5 minutes to take it from beginning to end at our live storytelling contest on Tuesday, July 18!
To sign up, call 212.494.0061, Tuesday - Friday from 12:30 - 6:30pm. Deadline to enter contest is Friday, July 14th at 6:30pm. Contestants accepted
on a rolling basis.
Who can enter the contest?: Anyone who has spent some time in the five boroughs of New York with a good story to tell, regardless of age or
ethnicity.
How will the contest be judged?: Audience vote counts for 50%, so bring your friends. The other 50% is from the current interns at the
Workshop. Read about the four of them here.
But my story is 8 minutes long!: Sorry, any story over 5 minutes will be disqualified.
Featuring N. Rain Noe, F. Omar Telan, Edward Garcia + special guests. Reception.
@ the Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
New York City
$5 at the door. Free for Workshop members.
Spring Calendar 2006 (past events)
Book party: Ed Bok Lee, Real Karaoke People
With special guests Pablo Medina, Taiyo Na and Purvi Shah.
Poet Ed Bok Lee presents a night of poetry and music. In Real Karaoke People, poems and prose combine tradition and pop culture
with the energy of hip-hop, the off-key voices of karaoke, and a girl's wicked drawl that first crackled through a KFC late-night drive-thru speaker.
Ed Bok Lee's collection of poetry, Real Karaoke People (New Rivers Press, 2005), was a recipient of the Many
Voices Project Award. A former state Grand Slam Poetry champion, he holds an M.F.A from Brown University, and regularly reads and performs his poetry and
stories across the country. Among his many awards are grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation. His work has been published
in Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Manoa, among others.
Booksigning, reception and live karaoke.
@ the Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
New York City
$5 at the door. Free for Workshop members.
The Million Dollar Book Contract: How To Get (THE BEST) Agent
Cosponsored with Poets & Writers magazine
If you are writing a book or have completed one, you will need an agent. Where? How? Who? Learn how to avoid the painful, expensive process of
sending out manuscripts yourself blindly and waiting for rejection letters. A panel discussion featuring four top literary agents sharing expertise on how
to land a book contract. Followed by audience Q&A.
Sloan Harris, International Creative Management
Dorian Karchmar, William Morris Agency
Ayesha Pande, Lyons & Pande International
Ira Silverberg, Donadio & Olson
Sloan Harris has worked in ICM's book department for 16 years, specializing in narrative nonfiction and literary fiction. Clients include
Jeffrey Goldberg, Hampton Sides, Doug Stanton, Susan Casey, George Pelecanos, James McManus, Anthony Lane, and Anthony Swofford, among others.
Dorian Karchmar is a literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York where she specializes in literary fiction and creative nonfiction.
She is a graduate of the University of Iowa's MFA program in Nonfiction Writing and represents a diverse group of critically-acclaimed and prize winning
authors, including Jennifer Haigh, winner of the 2006 L.L. Winship/PEN Award for the New York Times bestseller, Baker Towers, and the 2004 PEN/Hemingway award
for her debut novel, Mrs. Kimble; Eric Puchner, former Stegner Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner whose debut Music Through the Floor was one of the
breakout collections of 2005; Dr. Sharon Moalem, evolutionary biologist and author of the forthcoming Survival of the Sickest, a radical study of the
evolutionary histories of common inheritable diseases and conditions; and Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin, adapted by director Gregg Araki into one
of the most successful independent films of last year.
Ayesha Pande launched Lyons & Pande International last fall with her partner Jennifer Lyons. She was previously and editor for 15 years, including stints
at Crown Publishers and at HarperResource. In 2001 she moved to Farrar, Straus & Giroux as a senior editor, where she acquired and edited a range of literary
fiction and nonfiction, including the PEN Hemingway-winning GraceLand by Chris Abani. She represents clients who write literary fiction, narrative nonfiction
and young adult fiction, as well as historians and journalists. Clients include Malaysian writer Preeta Samarasan as well Pakistani American writer Sheba Karim.
Ira Silverberg is a literary agent at Donadio & Olson. Prior to that, he worked in publishing in various capacities including Director of Publicity
at Grove Weidenfeld, Publisher and Editorial Director of High Risk Books/Serpent's Tail, and Editor in Chief of Grove Press. Some of his clients include National
Book Award nominees Christopher Sorrentino, Rene Steinke and Adam Haslett; pop culture critics Neil Strauss, Jon Savage and Simon Reynolds; style gurus Kate Spade,
Katie Brown, and Amanda Brooks; as well as Andrei Codrescu, Dennis Cooper, Lawrence Chua, David Bezmozgis, Shelley Jackson, R. Zamora Linmark, Sam Lipsyte and
Heather McGowan among others.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
New York City
$7 in advance, $10 at the door.
For advance tickets, please call 212.494.0061 with credit card information.
Panel discussion: 51%: Women Write the World
Geography is literary destiny. A panel discussion featuring women writers from four continents on the powerful notions of home, how gender differences
influence a writer's literary landscape, what women writers around the world have in common, and if there is such a thing as a female imagination. With Melania
Mazzucco, Margriet de Moor, Helen Oyeyemi, Ann Provoost and Ayu Utami. Moderated by Jessica Hagedorn.
Presented with PEN World Voices and The New York Festival of International Literature.
Jessica Hagedorn was born in Manila in 1949 and moved to San Francisco when she was 14. She is a poet, playwright, and screenwriter whose works include
three novels, Dream Jungle, The Gangster of Love, and Dogeaters, and a collection of poetry and prose, Danger And Beauty. She is the
editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World. Her screenplays
include Fresh Kill, a feature-length film directed by Shu Lea Cheang, and four episodes of The Pink Palace, an animated series created for Oxygen TV.
Among her plays are Dogeaters, adapted from the novel; Stairway to Heaven; and Most Wanted, a collaboration with composer Mark Bennett.
Born in Rome in 1966, Melania G. Mazzucco has written subjects and screenplays for films, inventing stories or re-writing those of others; while for
theater she developed Una pallida felicit? (A Pale Happiness), which was performed theaters such as the Teatro Stabile in Turin, Piccolo Teatro in Milan,
Teatro Valle in Rome, and won the Gold Medal for Italian Dramaturgy in 1996. In 1996, she published her first novel, Il bacio della Medusa, and her second two
years later, La camera di Baltus. Her most recent book, Vita, won the 2003 Strega Prize, Italy's leading literary award.
Margriet de Moor was born in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in 1941. After a career as a classical singer, de Moor made her writing debut with a collection
of stories, Op de rug gezien (Seen From Behind), followed by three novellas in one volume, Dubbelportret (Double Portrait). These books earned her the
Lucy B. and C. W. van der Hoogt Prize in 1990. Her highly praised first novel, First Grey, Then White, Then Blue won her the AKO Literature Prize, for which
her second novel, The Virtuoso was also nominated. She has since published other novels such as The Duke of Egypt and The Kreutzer Sonata.
Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and has lived in London since the age of four. She completed her book The Icarus Girl just before her
19th birthday while studying for her A-level exams. She is now a student of social and political sciences at Cambridge University. Oyeyemi is currently at work on her
second novel.
Born in Poperinge, Belgium in 1964, Anne Provoost studied literature at the University of Louvain. She is the author of four novels. Her books have been
translated into 12 languages and received major literary prizes. Her latest novel is now longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Provoost is a
member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature. She lives with her husband and three children in Antwerp.
Ayu Utami was born in Bogor, Indonesia in 1968, and grew up in Jakarta. Her first novel, Saman, was awarded the Best Novel from Dewan Kesenian
Jakarta in 1998 and in 2000 she was a Prince Claus Award laureate for opening new horizons for modern literature in Indonesia. A founding member of Indonesia's
Alliance of Independent Journalists, Ayu Utami currently works for Radio 68H, an independent news radio station that is broadcast all over the country, and for the
art center Komunitas Utan Kayu. She writes regular opinion pieces in a newspaper and a magazine in Indonesia.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
New York City
Free
For more information, click here or call 212.334.1660
Reading and panel discussion: Young Adult and Children's Literature
Authors Jenny Han, Justina Chen Headley, Grace Lin and David Yoo read from their novels and talk about writing children's
and young adult fiction, subverting stereotypes and creating Asian American characters that reflect reality in literature for youth.
Cosponsored with the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families
Jenny Han was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned an MFA in writing for
children at New School University. She lives in New York City. Shug (Simon & Schuster) is her first novel.
Justina Chen Headley is the author of the young adult novel Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) (Little, Brown) and a picture book, The
Patch (Charlesbridge). After graduating from Stanford University, Justina worked as a marketing executive at Microsoft. She lives near Seattle, Washington.
Grace Lin is the award-winning author of over a dozen children's books, including The Ugly Vegetables (Charlesbridge), Dim Sum for Everyone!
(Knopf), and Robert's Snow (Viking). A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she most recently published her first children's novel The Year of the
Dog (Little, Brown). She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
David Yoo is a graduate from Skidmore College with an MA from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He lives in Massachusetts.
Girls for Breakfast is his first novel.
@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
New York City
$5 at the door. Free for Workshop members.
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