Reves Center for International Studies Events
[PAST EVENT] Filipino American Writing Festival - Readings by guest authors and book signing.
Access & Features
- Open to the public
W&M Filipino American Writing Festival will feature renowned authors Oliver de la Paz, Sarah Gambito, Joseph O. Legaspi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Patrick Rosal. All events are free and open to the public.
April 6th (Thursday)
6:30 PM-7:30 PM, Readings and Book Signings
Tucker Theater
Guests Speakers include:
Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is forthcoming from Liveright Press in 2023. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.
Sarah Gambito is the author of the poetry collections Loves You (Persea Books), Delivered (Persea Books) and Matadora (Alice James Books). Her honors include the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets and Writers, The Wai Look Award for Outstanding Service to the Arts from the Asian American Arts Alliance and grants and fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts and The MacDowell Colony. She is Professor of English / Director of Creative Writing at Fordham University and co-founder of Kundiman, a non-profit organization serving writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and three chapbooks: Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). His works have appeared and are forthcoming in POETRY, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Orion, and Best of the Net. He cofounded Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
Patrick Rosal makes lots of stuff. He’s the author of five full-length poetry collections including The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems, which won the William Carlos Williams Award and was named one of the The Boston Globe’s best books of the year. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, Fulbright Research Scholar program, the Civitella Ranieri Residency, and the NJ State Council for the Arts. As inaugural campus Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers-Camden, he leads the Quilting Water Collaboration, gathering global stories of water and supporting local quilting artists. A winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize, he has lectured, read, and performed in Europe, Africa, Asia, and throughout the Americas at venues such as Lincoln Center, NJPAC, the Cesar Chavez housing projects for agricultural workers, and Filipino Community Hall in Delano—comprising a quarter-century-long writing and performance career.
Contact
For more information, please contact Jon Pineda at [[jpineda]]