Bringing together the best of two worlds — poetry and noraebang –“Real Karaoke People” is a literary reading/karaoke event that will harmonize, shake, split, and excavate the deeper musical notes of diasporic narratives centered on community, family, the romantic, and immigration. Inspired by Ed Bok Lee’s Real Karaoke People, this event will feature readings by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Grace Cho, followed by a line-up of works gathered through a submissions process. Come to simply flaunt your mastery of a song from Boa’s Id; Peace B or submit a poem of heartbreak followed by your tear jerker rendition of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares.

Grace M. Cho is author of Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War, which won the 2010 book award from the American Portions of her memoir are in Gastronomica and bourdainmediumraw.com, where an essay of hers was selected as a finalist in Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw essay contest. Grace is the owner of Brown Butter Brooklyn, an artisan baking company and an Associate Professor at the City University of New York.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is assistant professor of English and director of American Racial and Multicultural Studies at St. Olaf College. Her debut collection, Paper Pavilion(White Pine Press 2007), received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Book Award. A Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network grant recipient, she is currently researching unwed mothers’ narratives and writing a second poetry book.

The event is a part of Neighborhood Word, our programming series that brings Asian American writers to the outer boroughs.

This event is co-sponsored by Nodutdol.

A Series on Community and Culture!