APALA Local Arrangements Friday Tour
Description: APALA invites members to the Ping Tom Park Walking Tour during ALA Annual Chicago. Ping Tom Park Advisory Council Co-Chair, Debbie Liu, and Ping Tom Park’s landscape architect, Ernie Wong, will host a brief tour of Ping Tom Park and its surrounding areas in Chinatown. During this 90-minute tour, participants will learn about the beauty of this riverfront park and its landscape and amenities, as well as the many years of advocacy that went toward making the park a reality. By walking through the historical neighborhood and comparing the “new” and “old” Chinatown, participants will be able to bridge their understanding of the past and future of the only growing Chinatown in the USA.
Date: Friday, June 23
Time: Meet at 9:40 a.m. Central; tour begins at 10 a.m. and will end between 11:45 a.m. – noon
Location: Ping Tom Park
Where to Meet: Chinatown Branch of Chicago Public Library – 2100 S Wentworth Ave, Chicago, IL 60616
Cost: This is a free event. Donations to APALA annual operations are accepted but not required.
Registration: Registration is required. Registration is limited to 25 individuals.
APALA President’s Program
Moderator: Annie Pho, APALA President
Panelists:
Charles Kim, Third State Books
Stephanie Lim, Third State Books
Michelle Li, Very Asian Foundation
Elaine Tai, APALA + Berkeley Public Library
Time: 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. Central Time,
Date: Saturday June 24
Location: McCormick Place, W183b
Title: APALA President’s Program 2023: Forging a new path: Asian American representation in Publishing, Librarianship, and Media
Description
Over the last few years, conversations about Asian American representation in the media has risen to the forefront and recently, Asian Americans have been celebrated for their creative works in the mainstream. The APALA President’s program celebrates the representation of Asian American voices in media, publishing, and librarianship. This panel will reflect on how we got to this moment, what challenges and opportunities there are for librarians and creatives who want to create space for AAPI perspectives, and how to think more critically about independent publishing avenues. Panelists will also discuss how we lift as we climb to ensure a diversity of Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the publishing, media, and information sectors.
Join in for a conversation with Michelle Li, a journalist and founder of the Very Asian Foundation, Charles Kim and Stephanie Lim, founders of Third State Books, the very first publishing house to focus on AAPI voices, and Elaine Tai, librarian, author of Yes Means Yes!, to discuss their creative inspirations to forging their own paths in their respective industries. This conversation will discuss the past, present, and future of AAPI representation in media, publishing, journalism, and librarianship.
Bios
Annie Pho is the Head of Instruction and Outreach Department at the University of San Francisco Library. She has a Bachelor’s in Art History from San Francisco State University and a Master’s in Library Science from IUPUI. She is the co-editor for the book Pushing the Margins: Women of Color and Intersectionality in LIS, as well as the co-editor of the Critical Race and Multiculturalism Series for Library Juice Press. Her research interests include intersectionality and women of color in LIS, student research behavior, and feminist pedagogy in information literacy instruction. She was a 2013 ALA Emerging Leader, a participant in the 2014 Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians, the recipient of the 2018 JCLC Rising Star award for APALA, and in 2019 she received the ACRL WGSS Significant Achievement Award for her work on the book, Pushing the Margins: Women of Color and Intersectionality in LIS. She is also the current APALA President.
Elaine Tai (she/her) is a librarian with strong interests in social justice and lifelong learning, and has been lucky to engage with wonderful authors, artists, activists, and others because of the reach of libraries. She is often motivated to create out of frustration, but also inspired and influenced by the community around her. She lives in the SF Bay Area with her curmudgeonly cat and spends her free time as a wannabe-patron-of-the-arts, [very] amateur artist, and collector of things. Yes Means Yes is her first book.
Charles Kim is Co-Founder and President of Third State Books, the first publishing house in North America to focus exclusively on publishing AAPI writers. He has spent nearly three decades moving forward the principles of authentic representation, equity, and narrative change in publishing. He previously served as Senior Editorial Agent at Serendipity Literary, the largest agency in the U.S. specializing in writers of color. He also served as Associate Publisher at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he oversaw the publication of forty titles per year and established an award-winning, best-selling line of children’s books. Before MoMA, he was Editor in Chief at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where he launched the Museum’s first publishing imprint and magazine; and Senior Agent at the French Publishers’ Agency, an office of France’s Ministry of Culture. Born in Seoul, Charles immigrated to America with his family at the age of seven.
Michelle Li is an award-winning, veteran journalist who co-launched the Very Asian Foundation in January 2022 alongside friend and fellow journalist Gia Vang.
Her response to a racist voicemail became a global movement of unity and caught the attention of The Ellen Show. Ellen’s monetary gift of $15,000 helped start the seed money to create a non profit focused on shining a light on Asian life through advocacy and celebration. Not only did the Very Asian Foundation raise tens of thousands of dollars for AANHPI nonprofits in its first 100 days, but it also launched a national awareness youth literature campaign called The May Book Project, and started the Very Asian Creators microgrant program for people who needed startup funds to pivot in their careers.
A Korean adoptee, Michelle spent many years supporting adoptees through heritage camps and volunteer tours to Korea. She also launched a program to support Missouri children in foster care. This work led to a congressional award in 2010. Michelle’s reporting has been honored with a national Peabody Award, four national Murrows, and multiple regional Emmys– often for covering topics related to race or gender inequities. Her work on the Asian American experience in St. Louis during the pandemic was also named a duPont finalist in 2023. Michelle has appeared on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and The Washington Post. She released a children’s book with Gloo Books called A Very Asian Guide to Korean Food.
Michelle currently resides in St. Louis with her family. She is @michellelitv on most platforms.
Stephanie Lim is the Co-Founder and CEO of Third State Books, the first publishing house in North America to focus exclusively on publishing AAPI writers. She harbors an abiding love of literary classics, guilty-pleasure genre fiction, fanfic, and children’s books. She worked for many years in digital marketing and operations, first as a strategist for advertising clients at Google, then leading e-commerce teams and managing multi-million-dollar advertising budgets for retail brands such as ModCloth, Bebe, and Serena Williams’s eponymous fashion label. Early in her career, she sifted through slush piles as an intern at Penguin Putnam and edited a mathematical children’s book for Charlesbridge Publishing, so coming back to the publishing world feels truly like coming full circle for her. Stephanie will always be a SoCal girl at heart, but she’s currently making the best of the perpetually foggy weather in San Francisco with her family.
APALA Literature Awards Banquet
Join us to celebrate our 2023 APA Awards for Literature winners and honors!
The goal of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature is to honor and recognize individual work about Asian/Pacific Americans and their heritage, based on literary and artistic merit.
Date: Saturday, June 24, 2023
Time:
6:00-6:30 p.m.: Check-in and Networking with APALA Members and Friends
6:30 p.m.: Family style dinner begins
7:00 p.m.: Literature Awards ceremony begins
Location: Ming Hin Chinatown, 2168 Archer Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616 (1 mile west of the convention center, so a 20 minute walk)
Menu: Family-style dinner
Cash bar: more details to come!
Registration: Please register for the event here.
- Early Registration (On/Before June 1, 2023, payment non-refundable):
$70 for Members
$75 for Non-Members
- Late Registration (After June 1, non-refundable):
$80 for Members and Non-Members
Please note: due to inflation and location, this year’s ticket price is higher than previous years. These current price points support APALA and also support Ming Hin since they’ve been impacted heavily by closure due to the pandemic and they honored our refund request back in 2020 when ALA AC was originally held in Chicago at that time.
Sponsorship Opportunities:
- Sponsor a Student Ticket – $75
- Table sponsorships are available! Please email Treasurer Kat Bell at treasurer@apalaweb.org for more information.
APALA Membership Meeting
Date: Sunday, June 25, 2023
Time 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Moderators: Annie Pho, APALA President + Jaena Rae Cabrera, APALA Vice President/ President-Elect
Location: Hyatt Regency McCormick, Prairie Room A
Description: The APALA membership meeting is an informal social gathering for APALA members to gather and network. APALA members will have the opportunity to socialize and discuss issues pertaining to AAPI librarianship.
APALA for Another 40: Support ongoing development of the APALA archives and the creation of an organizational records management policy (Poster 2)
Date: Sunday, June 25, 2023
Time: 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: McCormick Place, W190a
Presenters: Meng Qu (she/her/hers), Karleen Delaurier-Lyle, Gabi Kim Huesca, Stacey Akahoshi, and María Victoria Fernández
Description: The 2023 Emerging Leaders reviewed the Asian Pacific American Libraries Association (APALA) archival and records management practices to assess its current systems and inventory, and updated the retention review process for long-term use. The development of an evergreen records retention plan involved receiving input from key APALA stakeholders such as the Executive Board, committee members, and the Archives at University of California, Berkeley, which will preserve APALA’s long-term institutional records. Through this feedback, the Emerging Leaders cohort identified important documents and researched records management systems that best fit the needs of the organization. All of this led to the development of a migration process and timeline for APALA members to consolidate and transfer records into a central place. The ultimate goal of this project was to provide APALA with simplified operational policies and processes that can facilitate succession in a mission-driven, volunteer-run organization, while simultaneously safeguarding the key activities and efforts of one of the five members of the National Associations of Librarians of Color.