Join transnational Asian American artists and writers Fabiana Chiu, River 瑩瑩 Dandelion, Nilton Maa, and Jennifer Shyue for an evening of multilingual poetry celebrating Julia Wong Kcomt’s legacy and the transnational/translational life she forged in the world and on the page. In March 2024, Asian American literature lost a vital voice when tusán (Chinese Peruvian) poet Julia Wong Kcomt passed away from cancer. Over a career spanning 30 years, Wong Kcomt plumbed themes in her work including the body, desert landscapes, diaspora, love, madness, mothering, plurilinguality, and racialized womanhood in her poetry, fiction, and hybrid nonfiction.
After sharing poetry by both Julia Wong Kcomt and the participants in English and Spanish, we will discuss Julia’s place in her community as a “piedra angular”—a keystone—and cultural organizer, mentor, and central voice in tusán and Peruvian literature. What does “Asian American poetry” mean, and where do its borders fall? How do the cultural inheritances Julia writes about continue to echo? How does a sense of place show up in Julia’s work and our own? How do Julia’s words and her themes reverberate on?
Julia Wong Kcomt (1961–2024) was a Peruvian writer. Born into a tusán family in Chepén, Peru, she traveled from an early age, and her perceptions of country borders, different cultures, and diversity in ethnicity and religion became a strong motivation to write. She was the author of eighteen volumes of poetry, including Oro muerto and 18 poemas de fake love para Keanu Reeves; seven books of fiction, including Mongolia and Aquello que perdimos en la arena; and three collections of hybrid prose. Her books in English include Vice-royal-ties and A Blind Salmon, translated by Jennifer Shyue.
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Jennifer Shyue is a translator from Spanish. Her work has appeared most recently in The Margins, the New York Times, and Lit Hub, and has received support from English PEN, the Fulbright Program, the Cornell Institute for Comparative Modernities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Princeton University, and the University of Iowa. Her translations include Julia Wong Kcomt’s poetry collections A Blind Salmon and Vice-royal-ties and Augusto Higa Oshiro’s novel The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu. She can be found at shyue.co.
River 瑩瑩 Dandelion walks with his ancestors. He is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony. As a poet, he writes to connect with the unseen and unspoken so we can feel and heal. As a shamanic healing arts practitioner, he guides people through transformation. Winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers, River is the author of remembering (y)our light, a debut chapbook on honoring matriarchs and ancestors across generations.
A Tin House resident, Lambda Literary fellow, and Kundiman fellow, River facilitates creative writing workshops, where participants connect with their own inner and collective power. He has taught at Rutgers University-Newark, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Restorative Justice Initiative, Lambda Literary, Museum of the City of New York, and elsewhere. His work has been thrice-nominated for Best of the Net, and is published in award-winning journals and anthologies. River loves to swim and does this work for queer and trans ancestors and descendants to come. To connect, visit: riverdandelion.com. (Note: River 瑩瑩 Dandelion is pronounced “River Ying Dandelion.”)
Nilton Maa is a poet whose voice captures the emotional and cultural complexities of identity, queerness, and heritage. As a Chinese-Peruvian, his work reflects his tusán experience, exploring themes of belonging and the intersections of personal and collective history. Nilton has published four books, including the novels Cuando Muere la Niebla and ¿Qué bestia escoges hoy para morir? (May 2024). His poetry collections, rich in imagery and depth, have been featured in international literary magazines and anthologies.
His work has garnered recognition, winning awards in contests such as ‘Concurso de Microrrelatos La cruda brevedad’ and receiving an honorific mention in ‘El Mar.’ Nilton is also an editor at Nueva York Poetry Review and previously organized the Queer poetry event at Fuerza Fest, advocating for marginalized voices in literature.Though primarily a poet, Nilton’s passion extends to dance, singing, and acting, infusing his creative pursuits with energy and authenticity.
Fabiana Chiu- Born into a family of professional photographers, Fabiana Chiu is an educator, visual artist/photographer, writer, and arts administrator of Indigenous, Spanish and Chinese ancestry. Raised and educated in Lima, Peru, she is a first-generation college graduate, a first-generation immigrant to the US and a fourth-generation Peruvian Chinese.
Fabiana studied communications and journalism at Universidad de Lima, Eastern Kentucky University, and The Ohio State University. She has held key positions at museums in Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut and has spoken nationally and internationally on the topic of museums and communities. While serving as the Museum of Chinese in America’s first deputy director, she co-curated the core exhibition “Where Is Home: Chinese in the Americas.”
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COMMUNITY CARE & ACCESSIBILITY
At AAWW, the safety and comfort of our community is our top priority. We invite you to practice intentionality and care in your behavior and language when engaging with our programs and with each other. Violence of any kind, including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, class or casteism, bigotry or bias toward religion or faith, or any action or assault against marginalized identities, is not tolerated. Those who bring harm to our community in person or online are not welcome, and will be asked to exit the space.
The event will be live streamed on Zoom with auto captioning for those who cannot join us in person. For those joining us in person, we are located on the 6th floor of 112 W 27th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), there is an elevator that will take you directly to our office. To protect our friends with chemical sensitivities, AAWW is a fragrance-free space. Masks are required for audience members for all AAWW events; if you forget yours, one will be provided for you. We have three commercial grade air purifiers, and a quiet room in the back should you need some space from the crowd. We highly encourage all in person guests to take a COVID test at home prior to the event. If you have had COVID or have had known contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID in the 10 days prior, we ask you tune in for the live stream instead. Please reach out to msaleh@aaww.org for additional accessibility requests, including ADA accessible bathrooms, chairs with added back support, and beyond. This space is for YOU!
