Events

• July 25, 7:00 PM

  Chinese Speculative Fiction

  Join us for a special event with acclaimed Chinese novelist Su Wei and his translator Austin Woerner, who will read and present The Invisible Valley, a work of speculative fiction about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and an epic experiment in creative co-translation that has been ten years in the making. A rollicking adventure story set in the jungles of far southern China during the 1970s, The Invisible Valley follows a young man whose friendship with a family of migrant woodcutters plunges him into a strange world of magic, mysticism, and giant snakes. Su and Woerner tell the story of their unlikely friendship, their unique approach to translation, the literary legacy of the “Down to the Countryside” movement, and Su’s dramatic life story. In Chinese and English. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Su Wei is a Chinese nonfiction essayist and imaginative novelist, who spent his youth being “re-educated” through farm labor on a rubber plantation during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He was a prominent influence on the Beijing literary scene during the 1980s “culture fever.” He later went on to teach Chinese language and literature at Yale University, where he met Austin Woerner, his student, who would later translate Su’s novel, The Invisible Valley (Small Beer Press, 2018). Inspired by Su’s experiences during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, The Invisible Valley, the first of his books to be translated into English, follows a teenager working in a mountain encampment, who finds romance and excitement in the bizarre and mythical. Ha Jin writes: “The Invisible Valley is an extraordinary novel. It opens, even to Chinese readers, the world of a southern hinterland, a world of rubber groves, mystery and superstition. At the same time, the novel is intimately rooted in China’s modern history and resonates with universal implications.” Austin, a Chinese-English literary translator, has also translated two volumes of poetry: Doubled Shadows: Selected Poetry of Ouyang Jianghe, and Phoenix. He served as an editor for the innovative, bilingual Chinese literary journal Chutzpah!, and co-edited the short fiction anthology Chutzpah!: New Voices from China. He holds a BA in East Asian Studies from Yale and an MFA from the New School, and has also taught at Sun Yat-sen University, the first mainland Chinese university to offer a creative writing program in English. He is currently a lecturer at Duke Kunshan University. Over the course of six years, Su and Austin have worked closely together to “co-recreate” The Invisible Valley in English, and have also collaborated on a symphonic poem depicting the experiences of Chinese youth during the Down to the Countryside movement; their works explore displacement, isolation, exile, and the place of natural human longings for connection and love under oppressive sociopolitical climates. This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/..
  
• August 28, 7:00 PM

  A Reading

  Join us for a reading with Brown Girls web series co-creator Fatimah Asghar, who will read from her debut collection of poetry, If They Come For Us. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Fatimah Asghar is a nationally touring poet, screenwriter, educator and performer. Her work has appeared in many journals, including POETRY Magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets and many others. Her work has been featured on new outlets like PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. In 2011 she created a spoken word poetry group in Bosnia and Herzegovina called REFLEKS while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-genocidal countries. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective, a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship recipient and a Kundiman Fellow. Her chapbook After came out on Yes Yes Books fall 2015. She is the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/..
  
• September 10, 7:00 PM

  A Reading

  Join us for a special reading with Amitava Kumar, the author of Immigrant, Montana, and Teju Cole. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of several books of nonfiction and a novel. He lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. In 2016, Amitava Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. Teju Cole is a writer, art historian, and photographer. He is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College and photography critic of the New York Times Magazine. He was born in the US in 1975 to Nigerian parents, and raised in Nigeria. He currently lives in Brooklyn. He is the author of four books. This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/..