Events

• November 8, 7:00 PM

  Crossing Korea

  Join us for a reading with three Korean diasporic writers whose work spans memoir, poetry, and fiction to look at the legacy of the Korean War and the life of Korean adoptees in the United States. Eugenia Kim will read The Kinship of Secrets, a riveting story two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart. Alice Stephens will read from her darkly comic novel Famous Adopted People, which uses keen wit to examine the profound implications of not knowing where you come from. They’ll be joined by Julayne Lee, who will read from Not My White Savior, a memoir in poems exploring what it is to be a transracial and inter-country adoptee. Moderated by Jean Lee. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Based on a true story, Eugenia Kim’s The Kinship of Secrets (HMH, 2018) tells the story of two sisters separated by the Korean war; one grows up in prosperous American suburbia, as the other grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn’t remember. Krys Lee writes, “I felt as though I had stepped into a graceful story of two countries, South Korea and America, and family ties that survive the challenges of history.” Eugenia is the daughter of Korean immigrant parents who came to America shortly after the Pacific War. Her first novel, The Calligrapher’s Daughter won the 2009 Borders Original Voices Award. She is an MFA graduate of Bennington College and has published short stories and essays in journals and anthologies, including Asia Literary Review and Raven Chronicles. She currently teaches at Fairfield University’s low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program. Julayne Lee was given up for adoption in South Korea as a result of the Korean War. She was adopted by an all-white Christian family in Minnesota, where she grew up. She has spent over fifteen years working with overseas adopted Koreans (OAKs). She lived in Seoul and now resides in Los Angeles, where she is a member of the LA Futbolistas and Adoptee Solidarity Korea - Los Angeles (ASK-LA). She is also part of the Adoptee Rights Campaign working to pass the Adoptee Citizenship Act to ensure all inter-country adoptees have US citizenship. Not My White Savior is her first book. Born in Korea, Alice Stephens was among the first generation of transnational, interracial adoptees. Her work has appeared in Urban Mozaik, Flung, Banana Writers, and the Washington Independent Review of Books, which publishes her monthly column, Alice in Wordland. She lives with her family and dog in the Washington, DC, area. Co-sponsored by Also-Known-As and Nodutdol. This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/..
  
• November 12, 6:30 PM

  Slow Magic: Writing the Lyric Sentence

  Six Sessions, 2.5 hours (6:30PM-9PM) Mondays, November 12 - December 17 Fees & Payment Options: $325 General/$295 Member (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) *This is a small class. Please apply through the link below if you are interested. Please complete this application. We will notify you if you are accepted into the class. Registration Deadline: November 5. Why you should take this class: It’s easy to believe that there’s a kind of magic to writing—an inexplicable something that makes a word, a sentence, or an essay beautiful. Where does that magic come from, and how can it be replicated? In Slow Magic, we’ll slow down and listen to the meter. We’ll break down sentences and poems and strip them down, word by word, to see how they are formed, then use the tools we’ve learned to write new ones. This course will use poetry and poetic form as an entry point to writing more deliberate, beautiful, and effective prose. If you’ve ever wanted to write poems but never thought of yourself as a poet, or if you’ve ever wanted to have the opportunity to deeply engage with your writing on a sentence level, this is the course for you. Course description: Starting with the very basics, we’ll read some of our favorite poems, sentences, and song lyrics for scansion and meter. From there, the course will turn to different poetic forms—sonnet, sestina, ghazal, and more—to explore how form can affect content, and to nurture writing with an ear toward lyricality and rhythm. Drawing from contemporary poets such as Kaveh Akbar, Max Ritvo, Ada Limon, Jos Charles, and Anne Carson, and historical poets ranging from Shakespeare to Sappho, we will examine lyricism, maximalism, concision and revision with an eye toward learning how to convey exactly what we mean. The course will culminate in a polished prose piece (or long poem!) demonstrating the principles covered. Participants will be expected to work on one long piece throughout the duration of the class, as well as to write new work each week and participate in workshop discussion each week. You’ll leave with: -One workshopped prose piece or long poem, plus several other written exercises -Written feedback from Larissa on several pieces of your work -A community that is invested in your work and development as a writer Larissa Pham is a writer & artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review Daily, Bookforum, Guernica, The Nation, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Verso, Adult Mag, New York Magazine, ELLE, The Rumpus, The Hairpin, Gawker, Garage, Broadly, Packet Bi-Weekly, and elsewhere. In 2017 Larissa attended Jack Jones’s Literary Retreat as the inaugural recipient of the Yae Di Up Fellowship. She is the author of Fantasian, a New Lovers novella from Badlands Unlimited (2016). She is currently working on poem club, a project that activates poetry through a combination of code, aesthetics, and audio components. “Skilled, darting prose...If genre writing dishes up escapism and pleasure, then Pham accomplishes this.” —BOMB Magazine “Fires, sex, desire, murder, and the loss and creation of ‘the self’ are the building blocks of this breezy, dark novella.” —Baltimore City Paper “Tender and explicit, her e-letters shared snapshots like the grey bubbles of iPhone ellipses growing across a screen mid-sext, or her braindust after a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA.” —Dazed ..
  
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