RSVP HERE!

Award-winning poet, critic, and former Margins Fellow Yanyi will join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to read from and discuss his new book, Dream of the Divided Field. Acclaimed by poet Ilya Kaminsky as “tender, and eloquent” Dream of the Divided Field explores balance and transition, immigration and heartbreak, memory and violence, and much more. Yanyi will be joined in conversation by writer and former Margins Fellow Jen Lue, who will read from new work alongside Yanyi.

This event will take place outdoors (rain venue to be announced), at Teardrop Park in Battery Park City. Bring a picnic blanket and all of your friends, and RSVP for more information on the precise location of where we’ll gather to celebrate Yanyi!

Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, forthcoming 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, the New York Public Library, Tin House, Granta, A Public Space, Granta, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Poets House, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

In an interview with BOMB Magazine, Yanyi was asked about his creative process: “Why is it that we think artistic processes are about one person in a room alone? That’s a really isolating experience and not my experience of literature. I would not be able to continue on as an artist if I didn’t have people who loved me and cared about me, who were part of my artistic process. “

This dedication to community has led Yanyi to write a monthly creative advice column called The Reading, where he answers letter-writers with questions from ‘How Do I Write About My Identity Authentically?’ to ‘Am I Too Old to Emerge?’

Yanyi’s critical work has focused on power and editorial practices in poetry. In a 2018 essay on tokenization in The Margins, he asks “What would it be to stop playing our parts in the theatres of those who won’t value us readily?” His more recent work has examined how modern fascist movements and historically uncertain survival haunt the stakes of interpreting contemporary poetry.

Yanyi holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and formerly served as curatorial assistant at The Poetry Project and poetry editor at Foundry. He lives in Vermont.

Jen Lue is a 2021-22 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA fiction finalist. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, VONA/Voices, Tin House, Jerome Foundation, Millay Arts and Anderson Center at Tower View, among others. Her work has been featured in The Margins, Sepia Journal, BOMB Magazine, and Joyland. Photo Credit: Sally Wen Mao.