Does Valentine’s Day have you all atwitter? Ease into your “mahal kita” with an afternoon of stellar performances from acclaimed Filipino poets and writers. The featured performances from Hossannah Asuncion, Joseph O. Legaspi, Nita Noveno, Bino Realuyo, Ricco Villanueva Siasoco, and Lara Stapleton, as well as performances from Filipino community members, immigrants, and Fil-Am youth to celebrate love stories, Philippine Independence, and the thriving Filipino-American community in Queens. There will be fiction, poetry, hip-hop, and more. Join us for a rollicking afternoon of storytelling, camaraderie, and mouth-watering Filipino food!

This event is part of Neighborhood Word, AAWW’s programming series that brings Asian American writers and artists to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx — the boroughs most Asian American New Yorkers call home.

Hossannah Asuncion grew up near the 710 freeway in Los Angeles and currently lives near an F/G stop in Brooklyn. Her work has been published by The Poetry Society of America, Tuesday; An Art Project, The Collagist, and other fine places. This is what she notices: http://notarie.tumblr.com/.

Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of Imago, a poetry collection, from CavanKerry Press. Born in the Philippines, he immigrated to LA with his family at the age of twelve. He holds degrees from Loyola Marymount University and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Currently, he lives in Manhattan and works at Columbia University. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including North American Review, Gulf Coast, Bloomsbury Review, Puerto Del Sol, Seneca Review, The Literary Review, Gay & Lesbian Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bamboo Ridge, and the anthologies Contemporary Voices of the Eastern World, PinoyPoetics, and Titling the Continent. He received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets.

Nita Noveno was born and raised in Southeast Alaska. She is a graduate of the New School MFA Creative Writing Program in Creative Nonfiction, and is the founder and co-host of Sunday Salon (www.sundaysalon.com), a monthly prose reading series in its ninth year in NYC. Her writing has appeared in The MacGuffin and Ducts.org, amongst other places. She lives in Astoria, Queens.

Bino Realuyo was born and raised in Manila Philippines. He is the son of a survivor of the Death March and Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines during World War II. Realuyo is also an educator in under-served communities and author of the award-winning books, The Umbrella Country and The Gods We Worship Live Next Door. His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines including The Nation, The Literary Review, The Kenyon Review, New Letters, and in the recent anthology, Fire in the Soul: 100 Poets for Human Rights. He was a co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and is on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s international MFA program in Creative Writing.

Ricco Villanueva Siasoco has published fiction and essays in The North American Review, Memorious, and Joyland, and the anthologies Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images (Coffeehouse Press), Growing Up Filipino (Philippine American Literary House), and Walang Hiya: Literature Taking Risks Toward Liberatory Practice (Carayan Press), among others. He received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and taught writing at Boston College. He currently works at Prep for Prep in New York City and is completing a novel.

Lara Stapleton was raised primarily in East Lansing, Michigan, with some time in Manila in the Philippines, where her mother is from. New York City is now her home. She is the author of The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing (Aunt Lute) a Pen Open Book Committee Selection, and an Independent Booksellers’ Selection and the editor of two anthologies: Thirdest World (Factory School) and Juncture (Soft Skull).

This event is co-sponsored by Philippine Forum. For more information, contact Ricco Siasoco (rsiasoco[at]gmail.com) or Melanie Dulfo (mdulfo[at]philippineforum.org).

Free and open to the public.

A Series on Community and Culture!