Curated and hosted by Ishle Yi Park
Co-sponsored by Lady Leisure, Blue Rabbit Productions, Sulu Series

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.

This event is $10 – $20, sliding scale.

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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), a 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.