On November 30th, KSW Presents: “A Climb That Begins with Falling” featuring Duy Doan and Angie Sijun Lou. This reading is a celebration of Duy Doan’s newly published WE PLAY A GAME, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize.
Join us as our readers share works exploring what it means to climb and to fall: to fall back to our lines that came before, to our mothers, to our histories that bear repeating. And to climb into to all those sites and events that inform who we are today, with an eye towards structures of migration, memory, gender, and language.
The title of this event comes from Duy Doan’s poem “Another Way of Explaining It.”
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: We are opening up submissions for writers to be a part of this reading. Please see below for more information on how to apply.
PLUS: Check out KSW's latest Office Gallery exhibition, "These Must Be the Places", a photo exhibition by Anth Bongco!
WHEN: Friday, November 30 at 7 PM
WHERE: Arc Gallery and Studios, 1246 Folsom St., San Francisco, CA 94103
HOW MUCH: $8 Pre-sale, $20 Support Level (reserved seats) available. Reserve your tickets here.
*There is limited seating at the venue, you may purchase supporter level tickets to reserve seats. If you have a disability and/or need to be seated during the event, please contact us at
[email protected] and we'll work to accommodate you.
FEATURES
DUY DOAN is a Vietnamese American poet and the author of We Play a Game, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Slate, and TriQuarterly. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he later served as director of the Favorite Poem Project. He was born in Dallas, Texas.
ABOUT WE PLAY A GAME
Duy Doan’s striking debut reveals the wide resonance of the collection’s unassuming title, in poems that explore—now with abundant humor, now with a deeply felt reserve—the ambiguities and tensions that mark our effort to know our histories, our loved ones, and ourselves. These are poems that draw from Doan’s experience as a Vietnamese-American while at the same time making a case for—and masterfully playing with—the fluidity of identity, history, and language. Nothing is alien to these poems: the Saigon of a mother’s dirge, the footballer Zinedine Zidane, an owl that “talks to his other self in the well”—all have a place in Doan’s far-reaching and intimately human art.
ANGIE SIJUN LOU is from Seattle. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Adroit Journal, Hyphen, The Margins, Nat. Brut, The Rumpus, and others. She is a Kundiman Fellow in Fiction and a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
We are opening up submissions for writers to be a part of this reading. We will only be able to accept up to five readers.
Eligibility: We welcome writers of all genres, and strive to spotlight those of the Asian Pacific diaspora and people of color. We are especially interested in showcasing emerging writers who have had little stage time or few publications.At this time, KSW Presents cannot provide payment for writers who submit to be a part of this reading series, but we are actively pursuing funding for this program.How to Apply: Submit work that explores this upcoming event's theme, that can be read or performed within 3 minutes or less. Apply here (no fee).
ABOUT KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP
Founded in 1972, during the height of the Asian American cultural movement, Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) is the oldest Asian Pacific American multidisciplinary arts organization in the country. We offer classes and workshops, salons, and student presentations, as well as professionally curated and produced exhibitions, performances, readings, and screenings. KSW makes artists out of community members and community members out of artists. For the past 45 years, KSW has nurtured the creative spirit, offered an important platform for new voices to be heard, and connected artists with community. [MORE]