Join us for an evening of poetry. Pinocchio, Madama Butterfly’s son, and a boy clown are a few of the characters that Jennifer Kwon Dobbs imagines in Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press, 2007). Playful, erotic, at times mysterious, Li-Young Lee‘s Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008) describes the immanent value of everyday experience.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her poems have appeared in 5 AM, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ, Tulane Review, among others and have been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, 2003) and Contemporary Voices from the Eastern World (W.W. Norton, 2008). Her music collaboration, “Among Joshua Trees,” won the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Series and debuted at Carnegie Hall. She is a fellow at the University of Southern California and founding director of the USC SummerTIME Writing Program. Currently, she teaches literature and writing at the City University of New York – La Guardia.

Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behind My Eyes. His earlier collections are Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), Rose (BOA, 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University, The City in Which I Love You (BOA, 1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 1988 he received the Writer’s Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. He lives in Chicago with his wife Donna and their two sons.

Cosponsored by Kundiman and The Asia Society.

$5 suggested donation