A celebration of the launch of Muriel Leung's Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books). In this collection of essays in verse, Leung reconciles a familial history of violence and generational trauma across intersections of Asian American, queer and gendered experiences. Following the death of the poet’s father, Imagine Us, The Swarm contemplates vengeance, eschews forgiveness and cultivates a desire for healing beyond the reaches of this present life. Moving between the past and the present, Leung imbues memories with something new to alter time and design a different future.
This launch party will feature a reading from Leung's new book in addition to readings by Truong Tran, Hari Alluri, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Angie Sijun Lou and Addie Tsai.
Connect
Kearny Street Workshop - Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Muriel Leung - Website | Instagram | Twitter
Readers
Muriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm from Nightboat Books in 2021, and Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Gold Line Press and the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. Leung co-hosts The Blood-Jet Writing Hour Podcast with Rachelle Cruz and MT Vallarta. She is a member of Miresa Collective, a feminist speakers bureau. Currently, Leung is an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow at the University of Southern California where she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature.
Truong Tran is a poet ad visual artist. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at California Institute of Integral Studies, The Telegraph Hill Gallery, SOMArts, Mina Dresden Gallery, and The Peninsula Museum of Art. His books include, Placing The Accents, The Book of Perceptions, Dust and Conscience, Within The Margin, Four Letter Words, 100 Words and the much anticipated Book of the Other (October 2021). He is currently The Adjunct Professor of Poetry at Mills College where he teaches graduate courses about poetics and the crossing of writing and visual art.
Angie Sijun Lou is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, FENCE, Black Warrior Review, the Adroit Journal, the Asian American Literary Review, Hyphen, the Margins and others. She is a Kundiman Fellow, a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California Santa Cruz, and a calculus instructor at San Quentin State Prison. She has received fellowships and support from the Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony and the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference. She lives in Oakland.
Addie Tsai (she/they) is a queer nonbinary artist and writer of color, and teaches courses in literature, creative writing, dance and humanities at Houston Community College. She also teaches in Goddard College's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Regis University's Mile High MFA in Creative Writing. They collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. She is the author of the queer Asian young adult novel Dear Twin, which made the 2021 Rainbow Book List, and received press in Autostraddle, Bustle, Lambda Literary Review and others. Addie's writing has been published in Foglifter, VIDA Lit, the Texas Review and elsewhere. They are the Fiction Co-Editor at Anomaly, Staff Writer at Spectrum South and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.
Janice Lobo Sapigao (she/her) is a poet from San José, CA. She is the author of two books of poetry, microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and like a solid to a shadow (Nightboat Books, 2017). She is the 2020-2021 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate.
Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is the author of The Flayed City (Kaya). A winner of the 2020 Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Fellowship for Poets of Color and recipient of grants from the Canada Council of the Arts, his work appears recently or soon in the Watch Your Head (Coach House) and Pandemic Solidarity (Pluto) anthologies, as well as Apogee, Solstice, Tinderbox, Witness and elsewhere. Alluri’s collaborations lately are through BIPOC Writing Community, Community Building Art Works, The Cultch, The Digital Sala, Massy Books and Soft Cedar.
LOCATION:Virtual Library CLASS:PUBLIC TRANSP:TRANSPARENT END:VEVENT BEGIN:VALARM TRIGGER:-PT1440M ACTION:DISPLAY DESCRIPTION:Event Reminder - Author: Muriel Leung Imagine Us, The Swarm: A Launch Party END:VALARM END:VCALENDAR