LAMBDA LITFEST LA 2017 (www.lambdalitfest.org) PRESENTS:
Poetics of Self [Re/De] Construction: Litanies to My Brown Heavenly Body (honoring Mark Aguhar)
In homage to Pilipinx trans, femme artist, Mark Aguhar, Poetics of Self [Re/De] Construction: Litanies to My Brown Heavenly Body, queer writers-of-color in this creative reading and panel will explore how our very bodies become litanies, invocations of our existence, our world-making possibilities as what Parreñas Shimizu calls “sites for imagining alternative realities.”
Curated by: Muriel Leung
Performers:
Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and forthcoming spring 2017 from BOA Editions, Ltd. Chen’s work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed, and The Best American Poetry. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda Literary, and the Saltonstall Foundation. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. For more, visit chenchenwrites.com.
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is a poet, essayist, and artist born in the borderlands in McAllen, Texas. Her poems have appeared in PBS Newshour, Waxwing, Caketrain, DIAGRAM, DREGINALD, The Feminist Wire, The Western Humanities Review, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and elsewhere. Most recently, she has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and her book, BEAST MERIDIAN, was a finalist at Nightboat, FuturePoem, Saturnalia, and Willow Books, and is forthcoming from Noemi Press in early 2017. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, and her hometown is Houston, Texas.
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017) as well as the co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press, 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). A Kundiman, Lambda and Callaloo Fellow, they are part of the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. They have also been awarded fellowships from Can Serrat, Millay Colony for the Arts, the Norman Mailer Center and Imagining America. They serve on the Executive Board of Thinking Its Presence: Race, Advocacy, Solidarity in the Arts as the Director of Membership and Social Media and are a senior editor for The Conversant. Currently, they teach poetry at Sam Houston State University as an Assistant Professor in the English department.www.chinginchen.com
Kazumi Chin is the author of Having a Coke with Godzilla (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). His work has appeared in GlitterMob, HEArt, Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week series, and elsewhere. His blog, GODZILIANA H8S UR COLONIAL BS can be found at kazumichin.wordpress.com. When he grows up, he wants to be Ariana Grande.
Michelle Lin is the author of A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). Her latest poems can be found in HEArt, Apogee, Powder Keg Magazine, and more. She has taught for the LEAPS summer program, Gluck Fellows Program for the Arts, Young Writer’s Institute, and the University of Pittsburgh. She has performed for Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture, grlhood–redefining the I // here I am, Litquake, and more. A former editor for journals Hot Metal Bridge, B.E. Quarterly, and Mosaic, she currently serves as Poetry Reader for Twelfth House Journal.
Kimberly Alidio wrote After projects the resound (Black Radish, 2016) and solitude being alien (dancing girl press, 2013). She is the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Center for Art and Thought and a poetry fellow of Kundiman and VONA. She received fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program and the University of Illinois’s Asian American Studies Program, as well as a doctorate in modern American history from the University of Michigan. A tenure-track dropout and high-school teacher, she hails from Baltimore and lives in East Austin, Texas.
Born in Iloilo City, Philippines, Angela Peñaredondo is a Pilipinx/Pin@y poet and artist. Peñaredondo is the author of the chapbook, Maroon (Jamii Publications) and the book, All Things Lose Thousands of Times (winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize, Inlandia Institute). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, AAWW’s The Margins, Four Way Review, Cream City Review and elsewhere. Angela resides in Southern California, drifting between deserts, beaches, lowly cities and socially engineered suburbs.
Nicknamed “small but terrible” by her lola, Melissa R. Sipin was born and raised in Carson, CA. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things (Carayan Press 2014) and is Editor-in-Chief of TAYO Literary Magazine. Her work is in Guernica Magazine, Black Warrior Review, and PEN American Center, among others. Her fiction has won Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open and the Washington Square Review’s Flash Fiction Prize, as well as scholarships/fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Poets & Writers Inc., Kundiman, VONA/Voices Writers’ Workshop, Squaw Valley’s Community of Writers, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is hard at work on a novel, is obsessed with yellow mangoes and ordering Chinese delivery when she’s finally found a home. More at: msipin.com
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Now more than ever, our stories matter. Don’t miss #LambdaLitFest Los Angeles, a FREE, weeklong literary festival that celebrates and honors and expands on the rich, diverse tradition of LGBTQ writers and readers in the Southland. Register now: http://bit.ly/2kqiIRi
Sunslick Starfish 