Events this season sponsored by:
          
Beerlao and The Chinatown Ice Cream Factory

Friday, May 21, 2010, 9 PM
Mouth to Mouth: Open Mic

Start summer a little early with our raucous fourth Open Mic of the year, hosted by Jen Kwok and Ed Lin. This week will feature actress and writer Esther Chae—whose recent solo performance, So the Arrow Flies, was called “amazing and beautiful” by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang—and stand up comedian Brian Jian, who you should check out here and here.

Esther K. Chae is an international award-winning actor/writer based in Los Angeles and New York. Her numerous credits as a performer include TV shows NCIS, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, The West Wing, The Shield, ER; and theatre stages such as Yale Repertory Theater, La Mama, Mark Taper Forum/ Kirk Douglas Theater, P.S. 122 and Harvard/A.R.T. Chae's performances have been lauded as "talented" (Variety), "engaging" (Hollywood Reporter) – and may just "break your heart" (Asia Pacific Arts). Her most recent solo performance So the Arrow Flies, about a North Korean spy and the Korean-American FBI Agent who pursues her, was featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival ("a powerful and compelling script... fascinatingly gripping" - ThreeWeeks Magazine), Ars Nova Theater Festival (NY) and the World Women's Forum (Seoul). In 2009, it was invited to TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference of which she is an inaugural fellow. The play is being adapted into a feature film script.

Brian Jian was born and raised in New York. He performs stand-up comedy in clubs/colleges all over the city, and loves dogs and Guinness beer!

Sign up begins at 8:30 PM
5 minute slot
$5 suggested donation; open to the public

@The Asian American Writers’ Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Buzzer 600

Saturday, June 12th, 2010, 6:00PM
Letters to our Mothers: Meera Nair, Arun Storrs, Amy T. Paul, S. Mitra Kalita, Adhikaar’s Arts and Activism Group, performed by Megha and Shradha Lama

In Letters to our Mothers, five writers celebrate the multi-faceted voices of South Asian women in Queens and what it means to be heard across distance. This rare joint production curated by Adhikaar’s Executive Director Luna Ranjit, in collaboration with Queens Council on the Arts and The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, showcases readings by Asian American Literary Award-winning fiction author Meera Nair, author and Wall Street Journal editor S. Mitra Kalita, and poets Arun Storrs and Amy T. Paul. Shardha and Megha Lama—theater members of Adhikaar's Arts & Activism Program—will perform "I wish I could tell my Aama,” a theater piece incorporating dance and visual arts to tell bridge the difficult distances between mothers and daughters, asking “Aama did I ever tell you, I want to sing?” Reserve your spot here. There will be food!

Meera Nair is the author of VIDEO: Stories and a forthcoming novel from Pantheon, tentatively titled HARVEST. VIDEO won the Asian-American Literary Award and was chosen a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and Book magazine. Her stories, articles and essays have also appeared in the <>New York Times magazine, the National Post, The Threepenny Review, Calyx, Discover as well as in various anthologies and on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Meera has won fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2004 & 2008) and the MacDowell Artists’ Colony.

Amy Paul is a poet, activist, and a Radio Producer of Asia Pacific Forum. In 2006, Amy served as Project Manager of "Sukh aur Dukh ki Kahani", a Domestic Worker Theater Project and Performance.

Arun Storrs is an artist/activist born in Kathmandu and adopted when she was seven weeks old. She acted in, directed, and choreographed for several gender-focused performances, including The Vagina Monologues, Electra Speaks (a revival of the Women’s Experimental Theater’s original work), and Un-Gender (a dance theater piece performed at the Baryshnikov Art Center). In 2007, she received the Yale College Public Service Research Grant to travel to Nepal and work with Tibetan refugee children to implement a dance theater titled “Tibet Imagined.”

Shradha Lama was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and grew up Darjeeling and Bangalore, before moving to New York in April 2006. Her parents are her inspiration. She is currently studying at Queens College. Shradha participated in Adhikaar's Arts & Activism group in the fall of 2009, including the performance Nepali Queens: Un-silencing the Journey.

Megha Lama was born and raised in Kathmandu and went to school in Bangalore, India, before moving to Sunnyside, where she now lives with her parents and sister. Megha participated in Adhikaar's Summer Internship, in addition to taking part in Adhikaar's Arts & Activism, including the November 2009 performance of Nepali Queens: Un-silencing the Journey in Woodside, Queens.

Adhikaar's Arts & Activism Program provides a safe space for Nepali and Tibetan young women to explore creative self-expression,through writing, photography, dance, visual arts and performance.

Luna Ranjit was born in Katmandu. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Adhikaar, a nonprofit that addresses human rights and social justice issues pertaining to Nepali women in New York City. She earned a BA in Economics from Grinnell College and MPA in public policy at Princeton University. She has been awarded a Union Square Awards, New York Women's Foundation Neighborhood Leadership Award, and Ridgewood Nepalese Society Community Leadership Award. Her activism has been profiled in the New York Daily News.

Mitra Kalita is the deputy global economics editor at the Wall Street Journal and the author of Suburban Sahibs: Three immigrant families and their passage from India to America. At the Journal, she anchors the weekly column, New Global Indian. Most recently, she helped launch Mint, a business newspaper in New Delhi, as a founding editor, columnist and member of the editorial leadership team. Before that, she was a reporter at the Washington Post, Newsday and the Associated Press. She has covered a wide range of general assignment and business stories, including the impact of 9/11 on New York City's economy, on immigration and on South Asians and Arabs.She has spent much of her career writing about immigration, globalization and emerging economies, especially India. She is currently at work on two books, an economic memoir of India and a workplace manual. A native of Brooklyn, Mitra grew up in Massapequa, Long Island; Puerto Rico, and West Windsor, N.J. Mitra has a BA in history and journalism from Rutgers University and a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She has received many awards and her work is included in an anthology of the "Best Business Stories." She is a past president of the South Asian Journalists Association. Mitra is married to Nitin Mukul, an artist. They have a 4-year-old daughter and live in Jackson Heights, Queens.

 

Co-sponsored by Queens Council on the Arts, Adhikaar, and NYSCA

@Jackson Diner
3747 74th Street
Flushing, NY 11372-6337

Friday, June 18, 2010, 9PM
Mouth to Mouth Open Mic: Featuring Vidur Kapur and Lisa Chen

Got a summer fling you want to tell the world about? Come by for our fifth Mouth to Mouth Open Mic of the year, featuring stand up comedian Vidur Kapur and poet Lisa Chen. Lisa's book of poetry, Mouth, uses everything from poems carved in the loneliness of Angel Island barracks to reality shows and was called "playful, gorgeous, weird, often hip" by Linh Dinh. Last year, stand up comedian Vidur Kapur was one of the top three booked acts on US college campuses, where he and moved South Asian and LGBT students on the margins to the campus core. Come have a cold one on us.

Vidur Kapur was born in Calcutta, India and grew up in Delhi. He went to university in England and worked in the corporate world for a while before becoming a comedian. Mr. Kapur was nominated in '08 for a "NewNowNext" Award by MTV Network's Logo as "Brink of Fame: Comic." Vidur was selected as a New York finalist by NBC's "Stand Up for Diversity" initiative and performed as part of the famous New York Comedy Festival where he was described as "a comedian to remember." Vidur starred in a VH1 TV pilot called "Carolines" which will be aired soon. Vidur's most recent stand-up special "One Night Stand Up" Vol. 2 is currently airing on Logo. He was listed by India Tribune as one of the "Top 31 personalities of Indian Americans". He is known for discussing being Indian and gay in his comedy. He has co-starred with Margaret Cho in MTV LOGO's "Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack" and has toured internationally including Canada, India, the UK, Ireland, the Caribbean and South Africa.

Lisa Chen was born in Taipei Taiwan, lived for a long time in the Bay Area before moving to New York. She is the author of a book of poems, Mouth, published by Kaya Press and works as a consultant on media campaigns for social justice and environmental organizations. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other publications. She is also the co-author of The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them.

Sign up begins at 8:30 PM - 5 minute slot
$5 suggested donation; open to the public

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Buzzer 600

Come hear one of the foremost Asian American novelists of her generation and the artist-activists who defined what it means for all of us to be Asian American. This special symposium features key activists Corky Lee, Tomie Arai, and Jack Tchen alongside Karen Tei Yamashita, whose new novel, I-Hotel, is destined to be a future classic of Asian American literature.

2-3PM, Panel on Asian American Arts and Activism
Corky Lee, the pre-eminent photojournalist and documentarian of the Asian Pacific American community in New York, and Tomie Arai, pioneering Asian American artist and activist, present their works from the 1970s and today. In a conversation led by Jack Tchen, founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University, we hear how the arts create a collective memory of change.

3-4PM, Karen Tei Yamashita Reading from I-Hotel
Karen Tei Yamashita reads from her newest novel and her magnum opus, I-Hotel, which takes its name from San Francisco's International Hotel. When the I-Hotel's mainly Filipino residents were hit with eviction notices in the name of urban renewal, this Manilatown institution became the epicenter for the Yellow Power Movement. The hip, inventive novel follows a motley cast of students, laborers, artists, revolutionaries, and provocateurs through a riptide of politics and passion, clashing ideologies and personal turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s. Written in 10 chapters that read as novellas, each opening with a die showing 6-sides of the Asian American movement—like Aiko Masaoka, the 1969 TWLF Strike, the death of Bruce Lee and Eldridge Cleaver in exile—I-Hotel jumps from screenplay to fairy tale in a formally ambitious testament to the Asian American movement. By the time the survivors unite to save the International Hotel—epicenter of the Yellow Power movement—their stories have come to define the very heart of the American experience.

Karen Tei Yamashita is one of the foremost writers of her generation. She is heralded as a "big talent" by the Los Angeles Times, extolled by the New York Times for her "mordant wit," and praised by Newsday for "wrestl[ing] with profound philosophical and social issues" while delivering an "immensely entertaining story." I Hotel, which took over a decade to write and research, is her magnum opus, and one of the most ambitious Asian American novels ever written. She is author of five novels, including Through the Arc of the Rainforest, which received an American Book Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A California native who has also lived in Brazil and Japan, she teaches at the University of California-Santa Cruz. (Photo by Mary Uyematsu Kao)

John Kuo Wei (Jack) Tchen is a historian and cultural activist who for 30 years has been helping to give voice to individuals and communities of the past and the present who have been absent from our public history. He is the founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University and the New York Chinatown History Project (1980), now called the Museum of Chinese in the Americas. In 1991, he was awarded the Charles S. Frankel Prize from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is author of the award-winning books: Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown, 1895-1906 (1987) and New York before Chinatown: Orientalism, and Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882.

Tomie Arai is an activist, artist, philosopher, poet, historian, printmaker, instillation artist, and public artist who has worked collaboratively with community groups for over thirty years. She has realized numerous commissions, including ones from the Cambridge Arts Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Printmaking, a 1995 Joan Mitchell Visual Arts Grant, a 1997 Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Visual Artist Residency, and a 1994 NEA Visual Arts Fellowship. Arai's work explores the relationship of art to history and the role that memory plays in retelling a collective past. Some of her recent works include a series of constructions that incorporate silk-screened photographs addressing issues of identity, displacement, and acculturation. She is married to Legan Wong, has two children and is a grandmother.

Corky Lee, known as the "undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate," is a self-taught photographer, has been documenting Asian and Pacific American community for over 30 years. His work, which has been described as "only a small attempt to rectify omissions in our history text books," has appeared in Time magazine, the New York Times, The Village Voice, Associated Press, The Villager and Downtown Express. In an interview in AsianWeek Lee commented: "I'd like to think that every time I take my camera out of my bag, it's like drawing a sword to combat indifference, injustice and discrimination, trying to get rid of stereotypes."

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues

Free and open to the public
Programs funded, in part, by the New York City Council for the Humanities.
Program supported in part by the C.J. Huang Foundation

How does movement—social, political or physical—affect our personal identities and those placed upon us? Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Gina Apostol, and Purvi Shah each address the shifting nature of identity and its relationship with movement in different ways. Sueyeun Juliette Lee's most recent collection of poetry focuses on Korea and explores how national structures and identities affect human psyches. Gina Apostol's work explores the affect of both historical events and the written word on her characters. Purvi Shah's work explores migration as potential and loss.

Sueyeun Juliette Lee grew up 3 miles from the CIA. She is a poet, scholar, and editor. Currently, she lives in Philadelphia where she edits Corollary Press, a chapbook series devoted to multi-ethnic, innovative writing. Her first collection of poems, That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut Press), is a study of celebrity and the Asian figure in mass media. Her second collection, Underground National (Factory School), explores how national structures and identities affect human psyches, taking Korea as its primary staging ground.

Gina Apostol was born in Manila and lives in New York. She went to college at the University of the Philippines and earned her M.A. in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University. Her first novel, Bibliolepsy, won the 1998 Philippine National Book Award for Fiction. She just completed her third novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, a comic historical novel-in-footnotes about the Philippine war for independence against Spain and America in 1896.

Purvi Shah is the author of Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press 2006), which won a Many Voices Project prize. Her debut poetry collection, recognized across Asian American and women's communities, explores migration as potential and loss. She is preoccupied with the many facets of love, including its temporality and mathematics, concepts she explores in her current poetry project, Love Time(s).

 

@ Nodutdol
53-22 Roosevelt Ave, Second Floor
Woodside, NY
7 train to 52nd street

Free and open to the public

Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 8:00pm
Reading by Nelson George & Jessica Hagedorn at the Montauk Club

The Montauk Club is pleased to announce an evening celebrating literature as part of our new reading series, No Book Jackets Required. Featuring authors Nelson George and Jessica Hagedorn and curated by James Hannaham, the event is produced in partnership with Ringshout and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. The reading will take place at 8 PM, Wednesday, June 23, 2010, in the historic 120 year-old Ballroom at the Montauk Club, 25 Eighth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn (adjacent to Grand Army Plaza). Authors will read from recent work, followed by a panel discussion with a cocktail hour and tour of the club’s landmark building afterward.

The ticket price is free to club members and $5 for non-members; drink tickets for cocktails, wine, beer and non-alcoholic drinks can be purchased. Seating is limited: please RSVP by June 20, 2010 to manager@montaukclub.com.

The Montauk Club is a historic landmark in Park Slope, Brooklyn, designed by architect Francis H. Kimball in a unique combination of Venetian Gothic and Native American motifs. Its splendid interiors are host to a diverse number of cultural programs, including arts events, wine tastings, concerts and film screenings. We are glad to host this evening showcasing some of America's most exciting contemporary voices in fiction and culture. We hope you can join us!

Notes on Readers:

Nelson George is an author/filmmaker who has dedicated his life to documenting African-American culture. His latest books are Thriller: The Musical Life of Michael Jackson and the paperback of his memoir City Kid. Among his award winning non-fiction efforts are Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound, The Death of Rhythm & Bluesand Hip Hop America. He has written several novels, including the best seller One Woman Short. As a filmmaker he directed and wrote Life Support, starring Queen Latifah, for HBO and produced the documentary Good Hair for host Chris Rock. He's executive produced American Gangster for BET, Soul Cities for VH1 Soul, and Hip Hop Honors for VH1. Currently George is travel editor at large for the American Airlines travel site BlackAtlas.com. He can be contacted at nelsondgeorge.net.

Jessica Hagedorn was born and raised in the Philippines and came to the United States in her early teens. Her novels include Dream Jungle, The Gangster Of Love, and Dogeaters, which was nominated for a National Book Award. She is also the author of Danger And Beauty, a collection of poetry and prose, and the editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. Plays include Most Wanted, The Heaven Trilogy, and the stage adaptation of Dogeaters. Her new novel, Toxicology, is forthcoming from Viking Penguin in 2011.

Notes on Curator:

James Hannaham's first novel, God Says No, published by McSweeney's Rectangulars in 2009, was named an honor book by the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Awards, a finalist for a Lambda Book Award and a semi-finalist for a VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His stories have appeared in The Literary Review, Open City, Nerve, One Story, and several anthologies. His criticism and journalism have appeared in The Village Voice, Spin, Us, Out, and Salon.com, where he was once on staff, and have been reprinted in Best African American Essays 2009 and Best Sex Writing 2009. He teaches creative writing at the Pratt Institute and the New School.

@ Montauk Club
25 Eighth Avenue
Grand Army Plaza
Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

Saturday, June 26, 2010, 12 PM-1PM @ Woodside Library
Now Talks
The Task of the Translator: with Sinan Antoon, Fayre Makeig, and Lucas Klein

Although less than 0.7% of all literary books published in the United States as works in translation, translation acts as a central way we experience other cultures: including Asian. Sinan Antoon, Fayre Makeig and Lucas Klein come together to read their translations of Asian heavyweights like Mahmoud Darwish and H.E. Sayeh and discuss the role of the translator in an English-speaking world.

Sinan Antoon, born in Baghdad to an Iraqi father and an American mother, emigrated to the United States after the Gulf war. A professor specializing in premodern Arabo-Islamic culture, he is a writer of poems, plays and essays, as well as a novelist. In 2004 he was nominated for the PEN Prize for translation for his cotranslation of Mahmoud Darwish's Poetry and his translation of Darwish's last prose book is forthcoming publication. In 2003 he codirected a documentary,About Baghdad, about the lives of Iraqis in a post-Saddam-occupied Iraq. He has appeared on NPR, Al Jazeera English and The Charlie Rose Show.

Fayre Makeig is a professional writer, editor, and proofreader. Several of her poems are forthcoming in the Western Humanities Review. Makeig received a PEN Prize for translation for her translation of Mourning (2006), a selection of free verse poems by H.E. Sayeh, an eminent contemporary Iranian poet whose life and work span many of Iran's political, cultural and literary upheavals.

Lucas Klein, a former radio DJ and union organizer, is a writer, translator, and editor of CipherJournal.com. His translations, essays, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming at Two Lines, Jacket, and Drunken Boat, and he regularly reviews books for Rain Taxi and other venues. Soon to be Assistant Professor in the dept. of Chinese, Translation, & Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong, he is working on translations of Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin and contemporary poet Xi Chuan.

@ Woodside Library
54-22 Skillman Avenue

Free and open to the public
Programs funded, in part, by the New York City Council for the Humanities and New York State Council on the Arts.
Program supported in part by the C.J. Huang Foundation

     

Monday, June 28, 2010 7-9PM @ Nodutdol
Now Talks
Transnational Adoption: David L. Eng, Jared Rehberg, Wendy Lee, Marie Lee, Misoon Yang, and Eleana Kim

In the United States alone, more than 139,000 children have been adopted internationally in the last ten years--many of whom were born in China and Korea. Transnational adoption is rewriting how we understand Asian American identity--by implicating parents of non-Asian American descent who are eager to connect their children with their heritage, and adoptees who are Asian by heredity but often do not know what it means to be Asian American. This innovative evening presents writers from diverse backgrounds: Musician and adoptee Jared Rehrberg; author and adoptee Mi Soon Burzlaff; Professor David Eng, the author of a recent academic book on adoption; Wendy Lee, the author of a recent novel featuring Chinese adoption; anthropologist Eleana Kim whose scholarship explores the politics of overseas adoption; and Marie Myung-Ok Lee, a Young Adult's writer who has written adoptee characters.

David L. Eng is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a core faculty member of the Asian American Studies Department there. He is author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Diasporas and the Racialization of Intimacy(Duke, forthcoming) and Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Duke, 2001). He is currently at work on two new projects, a study of neoliberalism and desire in Chinese cinema and an analysis of political and psychic reparation.

Wendy Lee is a graduate of Stanford University and New York University's Creative Writing Program. Her first novel, Happy Family, was named one of the top ten debut novels of the year by Booklist and received an honorable mention from the Association of Asian American Studies. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Corporation of Yaddo, and currently lives in New York City, where she is an assistant editor at HarperCollins Publishers.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is an award-winning author whose novel, Somebody's Daughter, was a Booklist Best Book of the Year and an Association of American University Presses "Best of the Best". Her short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The American Voice, TriQuarterly, Witness, Guernica, and won an O. Henry Awards honorable mention. She had served with the New York City Literacy Project, PEN's Readers and Writers, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. She is also a founder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York City and served as its board president for 10 years. Marie has taught creative writing at Yale University and currently teaches at Brown University, her alma mater.

Mi Soon Burzlaff's non-fiction book Bravo Your Life has recently been published by Koryo Press. She is a Korean adoptee, and she met her birth family in 2001. She received a Fulbright grant to Korea in 2002 and spent a good few years in Seoul thereafter. Currently, Mi Soon and her best friend are starting Kimchi Sisters, a small, local and organic as possible NYC based kimchi company. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her partner and two children.

Jared Rehberg is a Vietnamese Adoptee singer songwriter from Northboro, MA. His album Waking Up American debuted in 2003, and Somewhere in the Middle was released in December of 2009. Jared has travelled around the country sharing is journey as an adoptee to adoptive families and the Asian American community. He currently lives in Woodside with his wife Ying.

Eleana Kim is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor at the University of Rochester. Her research since 1999 has examined the political, economic and cultural dimensions of transnational adoption from South Korea, and she has published articles based upon this research in Visual Anthropology Review, Social Text, and Anthropological Quarterly. Her book, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in November 2010.

@ Nodutdol
53-22 Roosevelt Ave, Second Floor
Woodside, NY
7 train to 52nd street

Free and open to the public
Programs funded, in part, by the New York City Council for the Humanities and New York State Council on the Arts.
Program supported in part by the C.J. Huang Foundation

     

Friday, July 23, 9 PM
Mouth to Mouth Open Mic: hosted by Sung J. Woo and Ali Wong

Exhausted from having to walk around under the summer sun? Escape the heat with our sixth Open Mic of the year. This week we feature author Sung J. Woo whose short story "Limits" was an Editor's Choice winner in Carve Magazine's 2008 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, and academic-turned-comedian Ali Wong whose past and present relationships are often fodder for Wong's comedy routine.

Sung J. Woo's short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney's, and KoreAm Journal. His debut novel, Everything Asian (2009), has received praises from The Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus Reviews (starred review), the Chicago Sun-Times, and won the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (Youth category). He is graduate of Cornell University with an MFA from NYU. He lives in Washington, New Jersey.

Ali Wong got her bachelor's degree in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles with an aim to become a professor. But, her comic wit would lead her down a different path. Wong, who is of Vietnamese and Chinese descent, passed up an offer to pursue a master's degree at UCLA and decided to take the stage cracking jokes in San Francisco and in New York. Wong has just filmed the MTV show "Nick Cannon Presents Hatin' on '09," which first aired Jan 1. Viral videos like "American Apparel," showing Wong dancing with her friend Chris Garcia in leotards and sweatbands have garnered thousands of hits.

Sign up begins at 8:30 PM - 5 minute slot
$5 suggested donation; open to the public

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
112 W 27th Street, 6th Floor
Btwn 6th and 7th Avenue
Buzzer 600

Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 7-9PM
Open City: Fay Chiang and Peter Kwong on Gentrification and Chinatown/Loisada

Galleries, luxury condos, displacement, rezoning, affordable housing, neighborhood preservation. These are a few keywords in the active and ongoing conversation about gentrification, development, and urban change more broadly. But what is the role of writing in the face of this kind of urban change? Two activists, scholar Peter Kwong of Hunter College/CUNY and artist Fay Chiang, will thread personal accounts of their lives as scholars and artists in Chinatown/Loisada with broader analyses of neighborhoods in flux. Their discussion will launch the Workshop’s community-based writers fellowship, "OPEN CITY: Blogging Urban Change," where fellows collect oral history from residents of Chinatown/LES, Sunset Park, and Flushing. Partnering with the Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA) and its Archeology of Change Project, Open City is an innovative spin on the neighborhood blog, one that incorporates oral history, video/audio content, and new interdisciplinary writing.

Chiang’s recently released book of selected poems, 7 Continents, 9 Lives, spans 20 years of poetry as a Queens native and a Lower East Side activist, revealing the multiple lives of the city, ranging from widows to a man’s final steps into an AIDS hospice. Kwong’s classic study The New Chinatown, was heralded as a “splendid antidote to the consistent misrepresentation of Chinese-American life in the press and in scholarly writings” by David Montgomery of Yale University.

Peter Kwong is Professor of Asian American Studies and Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, as well as Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His latest books are Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community and Chinese Americans: An Immigrant Experience, co-authored with his wife, Chinese historian Dusanka Miscevic. A frequent contributor to The Nation, Kwong was a co-producer of Academy Award-nominated Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province for HBO and was named “one of the 100 Most Influential Asian Americans of the Decade” by A Magazine.

Fay Chiang has been a poet, visual artist, community and cultural activist in NYC Chinatown and the Lower East Side for the past 39 years. Former executive director of the Basement Workshop (the first Asian American nonprofit multidisciplinary cultural organization in NYC and the east coast), she joined Project Reach in 2000. She is author of two volumes of poetry, In The City of Contradictions, and Miwa’s Song. 7 Continents, 9 Lives, a collection of selected and new poetry, was recently released in February 2010 by Bowery Press.

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues

Free and open to the public
Programs funded, in part, by the New York City Council for the Humanities.

Saturday, August 14, 11pm
THE BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION presents UNIFICATION 2010

Commencing at 11 pm on Saturday, August 14 (Pakistan's Independence Day) and continuing into the early morning hours of August 15 (India's Independence Day), UNIFICATION 2010 celebrates 63 years of independence and the voices of talented, socially conscious South Asian/American artists. With performances by DJ Rekha, The Kominas, Hari Kondabolu, Fair and Kind, and others, UNIFICATION 2010 will explore the politics of our motherlands, reveal the experiences of being brown outside of it, and question the tensions between us, while fostering a movement towards a more peaceful, unified South Asia. Proceeds from UNIFICATION 2010 will support South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).

Often credited for introducing bhangra to North American audiences, DJ Rekha is a producer, activist, and musician. Named her one of the most influential South Asians in the United States by Newsweek, DJ Rekha was proclaimed by “one of the ten women of downtown music” by the New York Times Magazine.

The Kominas are a punk rock bank based in Boston, Massachusetts, comprised of four brown sons of South Asian parents. Inspired greatly by Taqwacore, The Kominas released an album in 2008 called Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay.

According to the Seattle Times, Hari Kondabolu is a "young man reaching for the hand-scalding torch of confrontational comics like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor." An accomplished and socially-minded comedian, Hari has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central's Live at Gotham and was featured in the 2007 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. You can learn more about Hari at www.harithecomic.com.

Fair & Kind is the dream pop collaboration of siblings Arthi Meera and Anand Subramanian, featuring exquisite vocals, sparkling guitars, and lavish melodies. Their debut album, A Little Past Twilight, was self-released in October 2008.

BROWNSTAR (Pushkar Sharma and Sathya Sridharan) merges high-energy comedy, personal memoir, and science fiction to ignite a dialogue about the South Asian American experience. The spoken-word duo will be premiering their theatrical show, FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF WHITE, at the New York International Fringe Theatre Festival in August 2010. More at: BROWNSTARREVOLUTION.com

South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) is a national, nonpartisan, non-profit organization that elevates the voices and perspectives of South Asian individuals and organizations to build a more just and inclusive society in the United States. SAALT is the only national, staffed South Asian organization that advocates around issues affecting South Asian communtiies through a social justice framework. SAALT’s strategies include conducting public policy analysis and advocacy; building partnerships with South Asian organizations and allies; mobilizing communities to take action; and developing leadership for social change.

** For press passes or to schedule interviews with the artists or organizers, contact Amita at amitam@gmail.com

Advanced tickets $20 @ www.joespub.com
Same day tickets $25 @ the door

@ Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette St
between East 4th St and Astor Place

Co-sponsored by:
Asian American Writers' Workshop
Indo-American Arts Council
Naan Sense Radio
PakUSonline
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Friday, August 20, 2010, 9PM
Mouth to Mouth Open Mic: featuring Brownstar and Jaed Coffin

Alabama’s got us so upset, Tennessee’s made us lose our rest, and now everybody knows about Arizona! Spoken word duo Brownstar and memoirist Jaed Coffin, led by hosts Ed Lin and Jen Kwok, will perform in response to SB 1070 and The Workshop’s WORDSTRIKE: Writers’ Boycott of Arizona. Bring your stories of immigration to this last open mic of the summer. Proceeds will benefit organizations fighting SB 1070.

BROWNSTAR (Pushkar Sharma and Sathya Sridharan) merges high-energy comedy, personal memoir, and science fiction to ignite a dialogue about the South Asian American experience. More about the spoken word duo at: BROWNSTARREVOLUTION.com

Jaed Muncharoen Coffin is the author A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants, a memoir which chronicles the time he spent as a Buddhist monk in his mother's village in Thailand. His next book, Roughhouse Friday, is about the year he fought as the middleweight champion of an Alaskan barroom boxing circuit. From Brunswick, Maine, Jaed is currently the Wilson Fellow in Creative Writing at Deerfield Academy, and serves on the faculty of University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA.

Sign up begins at 8:30 PM - 5 minute slot 

$5 suggested donation; open to the public

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop 

112 W 27th Street, 6th Floor 

Btwn 6th and 7th Avenue 

Buzzer 600

Programs supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts.

For writing workshops and information, click here.

Events, unless otherwise noted, will be held at The Asian American Writers’ Workshop

As of May 2010:
The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, Sixth Floor
New York, NY 10001

Location
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Flower District, Midtown Manhattan, near Herald Square, Penn Station and the Empire State Building
Subway
N, R, Q, W, F, B, D, V trains to 34th Street/Herald Square
4, 5, 6 trains to 33rd Street
1, 2, 3 trains to 34th Street