S218.

Call It a Beginning: An Undocupoets Anniversary Reading

121A, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 100 Level
Saturday, March 26, 2022
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm

 

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Undocupoets Fellowship, a grant awarded to poets who are currently or who were formerly undocumented in the US, this reading features the debut collections of four recipients of the fellowship. This dynamic reading presents a complex and nuanced narrative of the undocumented experience and highlights each poet’s differences in approach and vision. Each poet will also share a poem written by another Undocupoets Fellow to preview the books yet to come.



Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: 2022_AWP_Undocupoets_Event_Outline.pdf

Participants

Moderator:

Janine Joseph is a poet, librettist, and author of Driving without a License, winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, and the forthcoming Decade of the Brain. A co-organizer for Undocupoets and MacDowell Fellow, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University.

Anni Liu is the author of the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize-winning poetry collection The Eye Trees. She edits at Graywolf Press, translates the contemporary Chinese poet Du Ya, and is working on a hybrid memoir about unbearable intimacies. You can find her online at anniliuwrites.wordpress.org.

Wo Chan is a poet and drag performer. They are a winner of the 2020 Nightboat Poetry Prize and the author of Togetherness (2022). Wo has received fellowships from MacDowell, New York Foundation of the Arts, Kundiman, the Asian American Writers Workshop, and elsewhere. Find them @theillustriouspearl

Aline Mello is an immigrant from Brazil and a 2018 Undocupoets fellow. Her work can be found in journals and anthologies such as the Georgia Review, Grist Journal, and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: Latinext. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming in 2022 from Andrews McMeel.

Jan-Henry Gray (he/him) is the author of Documents, chosen by D. A. Powell as the winner of BOA Editions' Poulin Poetry Prize. His chapbook, Selected Emails, is available through speCt! Books. An Undocupoets and Kundiman fellow, he is a visiting assistant professor at Adelphi University.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center