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"on May / nights / even rain / is black" Poet and collector John Solt speaks about the poetry and art of Kitasono Katue, one of the most influential Japanese avant garde poets of the twentieth century.
The Asian American Writers Workshop (AAWW) has announced the ten recipients of its 2016 Margins and Open City Fellowships. The fellowships are given to emerging Asian and Asian American creative writers and journalists based in New York City. Fellows receive $2,500 to $5,000, publication in one of AAWW’s online publications, and career development.
The 2016 Margins Fellows are poet Jen Hyde, fiction writer Vt Hung, fiction writer and filmmaker Steven Tagle, and nonfiction writer Wei Tchou. The fellowships each include $5,000, publication opportunities in the Margins, a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts, writing space at AAWW’s offices in New York City, and guidance and mentorship from writers and editors in the AAWW community.
The Spring 2016 Open City Fellows are nonfiction writers Jai Dulani, Rahimon Nasa, and Thanu Yakupitiyage. Each fellow receives $2,500, publication in Open City, and career development opportunities to “craft narratively driven creative nonfiction and reportage about issues that matter to the 1.6 million Asian immigrants who call the five boroughs home.” This year, AAWW also awarded three Spring 2016 Open City Language Justice Fellows to Liz Chow, Yichen Tu, and Rong Xiaoqing. The fellowships, which offer the same benefits as the Open City Fellowships, are given to Asian-language immigrant journalists. The inaugural fellows will spend six months developing stories from New York City’s Chinatowns and beyond. All three fellows are journalists who have covered New York City immigrant communities for Asian-language media outlets.
The Margins and Open City fellows were selected from a group of more than a hundred applicants by a panel of writers, AAWW board members, and former fellows. The Language Justice fellows were nominated by members of the AAWW community. Applications for the Fall 2016 Open City Fellowships will open in April; applications for the 2017 Margins Fellowships will open in July.
Established in 1991, the AAWW is devoted to advancing the creation and publication of Asian American writing. Read more about the AAWW, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, in Arvin Temkar’s article “AAWW Continues the Conversation” in the Jan/Feb 2016 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Photos, top row from left: Jen Hyde (Patrick Delorey), Vt Hung (Diana Mai), Steven Tagle (Christopher Smith Photography), Wei Tchou. Middle: Jai Dulani, Rahimon Nasa, Thanu Yakupitiyage. Bottom: Liz Chow, Yichen Tu, Rong Xiaoqing
Nobel laureate Imre Kertész has died; reading past bad first impressions; judges for the 2016 National Book Awards announced; and other news.
Flint, Michigan, teen poets on the power of art; the Los Angeles Times appoints major writers as new book-critics-at-large; Afghani book drive helps build libraries in areas struck by violence; and other news.
Alice Sola Kim reads a selection of short stories for a Litquake event with Kearny Street Workshop in 2012. Kim is one of the 2016 Whiting Award winners in fiction.
Industry is one of the greatest factors contributing to the unique character of a place. Deep coal mines and narrow hollers made much of Appalachia feel like an isolated labyrinth. Western Pennsylvania’s steel mills, with their raging blast furnaces and endless soot, created a real-life inferno. The logging industry turned the Pacific Northwest into a land ruled by mist, danger, and falling giants. What industries have shaped the people and landscape of your home? In an essay, explore the philosophical implications an industry can have on towns and the character and psyche of its inhabitants.
VIDA: Women in Literary Arts releases 2015 VIDA Count; an interview with Los Angeles poet laureate Luis J. Rodriguez; a field report of Shakespeare’s First Folio cross-country tour; and other news.
In this blend of prose poem and lyric essay, the late poet C. D. Wright engages with a range of subjects including Jean Valentine, Robert Creeley, the world within words, and Walmart. The book is a chance to experience one of our most unique poetic thinkers in action, arguing on behalf of poetry’s persistence while enacting her own gifts passage by passage.
Tale of Tales is a film adaptation based on the Pentamerone, a seventeenth-century publication of fairy tales collected by Italian poet Giambattista Basile, which contains the earliest versions of stories such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty. Directed by Matteo Garrone, the film stars Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, and John C. Reilly.
On March 8, 1941, Sherwood Anderson, author of the American classic Winesburg, Ohio, died from peritonitis. An autopsy later revealed that a swallowed toothpick was to blame. Craft a story in which a seemingly benign object, like a toothpick, ends up as the catalyst for some great change or tragedy. The object can be the focus of the story, as you track its movements through space and time, or it can appear in a brief moment, only to rise back up with great consequence. Think about how the tiniest details can give a narrative a new spin.
