Lacuna means a gap in a manuscript. Emerging AAPI writers write from the gaps, telling stories to evoke a sense of belonging and history while at the same time rebuilding a home and future in the diaspora.
Two writers in the AAPI community will read and describe their creative process and inspiration of their recently published first books:
Viet Thanh Nguyen is an associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, as well as a member of the steering committee for the Center for Transpacific Studies. He is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (Oxford University Press, 2002) and the recent novel The Sympathizer, from Grove/Atlantic. His articles have appeared in numerous journals and books, including PMLA, American Literary History, Western American Literature, positions: east asia cultures critique, The New Centennial Review, Postmodern Culture, the Japanese Journal of American Studies, and Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. His short fiction has been published in Manoa, Best New American Voices 2007, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, the Chicago Tribune, and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
Lysley Tenorio’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, and The Best New American Voices and Pushcart Prize anthologies. A Whiting Writer’s Award winner and former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has received fellowships from the University of Wisconsin, Phillips Exeter Academy, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in the Philippines, Lysley currently lives in San Francisco, and is an associate professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Paul Ocampo (moderator) assisted Maxine Hong Kingston in editing Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, which includes his short story “Butterfly.” He was a former editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and is a recipient of the SF Arts Commission Individual Artist Commissions grant.
The event will feature readings from the authors. Q&A will follow.
The event is scheduled for Saturday, June 27, 2015, from 2:00-3:30 p.m. at the I-Hotel Manilatown Center, 868 Kearny Street, San Francisco. It is free to the public, but please RSVP. Refreshments will be served.
The event is sponsored by Lacuna Giving Circle, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and APALA.