RSVP IS REQUIRED TO ATTEND THIS EVENT IN-PERSON. MASKS ARE REQUIRED FOR ALL ATTENDEES.

This November, AAWW is so excited to be joined by debut poets Xiao Yue Shan & Simon Shieh for a celebratory co-launch of their collections and a conversation on poetics of secrecy. Xiao Yue Shan’s collection, then telling be the antidote is a winner of the Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize. As lauded by Victoria Chang, Shan’s collection “floats in the liminal space between countries, between history, between language. Shan’s poems explore themes of home, gender, politics, all the while exploring the threshold of the long line. These poems are lush and airy at once, uncertain and certain, powerful and gentle. Shan’s voice is unique and her gifts palpable, and we’re so lucky to have her words passed onto our hands.” Winner of the 2022 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Terrance Hayes, Master, the debut collection from Simon Shieh, is a stark, surreal, and imagistic reckoning with a traumatic past. Poet Sally Wen Mao notes, “The beauty in this book is heartbreaking, brutal. Unsparing in its analysis and deconstruction of power, Master is a startling and stunning debut collection.”

Xiao Yue Shan is a poet, writer, editor, and translator. Born in Dongying, China and living on Vancouver Island. The collection, then telling be the antidote, won the Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize and is forthcoming in 2023. The chapbook, How Often I Have Chosen Love, won the Frontier Poetry Chapbook Prize and was published in 2019. She has received the New Millennium Award for Poetry and the Juxtaprose Poetry Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, the Artlyst Art to Poetry Award, and the Ambit Poetry Competition. Poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and more. Prose works have appeared in Granta, 3:AM Magazine, Electric Literature, Cleveland Review of Books, The Shanghai Literary Review, and more. Poem-films have shown in festivals in London, Vienna, New York City, and Athens. Her work has been supported by the Canadian Council for the Arts and Arts Council Tokyo. She runs the Beijing-based bilingual literary journal Spittoon Literary Magazine, and edits Tokyo Poetry Journal and the Asymptote Journal blog. Her website is shellyshan.com

Simon Shieh is the author of Master (Sarabande Books, 2023), chosen by Terrance Hayes for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize. His poems and essays are published in AAWW’s The Margins, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Guernica, and The Yale Review, among others, and have been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Literature fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He works with Xiao Yue Shan and Zuo Fei on Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates the best new Chinese writers into English.

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ACCESSIBILITY & SAFETY

The event will be live streamed with auto captioning for those who cannot join us in-person. There is an elevator to the 6th floor. AAWW is a fragrance-free space. Masks are required for all attendees; if you forget yours, one will be provided for you. While a negative COVID test is not required, it is very much encouraged. If you have had COVID or have had known contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID in the 14 days prior to the event, we ask you tune in for the livestream instead. Please reach out to dmanibo@aaww.org for additional accessibility requests, including ASL (please request at least 10 days prior to the event), ADA accessible bathrooms, chairs with added back support, and beyond. This space is for YOU!