Co-sponsoring Organizations:  Asian Art Museum, Filipino American Development Foundation, Kearny Street Workshop, Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble and The Philippine Consulate General of San Francisco, California.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of poeta en san francisco (Tinfish Press, Kane`ohe, Hawai`i, 2005), for which she received the Academy of American Poets 2005 James Laughlin Award. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, her MFA at SFSU. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appeared or is forthcoming in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Interlope, Nocturnes (Re)view of the Arts, North American Review, Parthenon West Review, Shifter, Tinfish, Word Riot, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan, Eros Pinoy, InvAsian, Going Home to a Landscape, Not Home But Here, Pinoy Poetics, and Red Light: Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts. Her first book, Gravities of Center, was published by Arkipelago Books (SF, 2003).

Jaime Jacinto is a founding member of the Bay Area Filipino American Writers' Workshop. His first book of poems Heaven Is Just Another Country published by Kearny Street Workshop Press was nominated for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA) Award in 1997. He teaches at San Francisco State University.

Jason Bayani is an accomplished Bay Area spoken word poet and performer, a member of many National poetry slam teams, and the 2003 Berkeley/SF poetry slam champion. He has toured extensively across the nation, is featured in hip-hop documentary “Soundz of Spirit”, and is a member of the Filipino American spoken word collective Proletariat Bronze.

Jason Perez is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and member of the Freedom Writers spoken word performance collective.  He now resides in Oakland, CA and is completing an MFA in Writing & Consciousness at New College of California.  He is working on a first collection of short stories, for which arise the following possible titles: The Savage Lovebird, A Lovesong for Savages, Megastardom, Slow Jams and Toast, My Father Is A TFC Subscriber, Your Momma Watches Darna? Mine Too!

Joël B. Tan is the author of Monster (Noice Press, '02), Type O Negative (Red Hen Press, '06) and El Canto de Animal (Noice Press, ’05), is the editor of Inside Him--Gay Erotic Fiction (Carroll & Graf, '06) & Best Gay Asian Erotica (Cleis, '98 & '03). Joël’s works have been published in: Asian American Sexualities ed. Russell Leong (Routledge), Q&A: Queer & Asian in America, eds David Eng & Alice Hom (Temple), Fresh Men: New Voices in Gay Fiction, ed. Edmund White (Carroll & Graf), On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast, ed. G. Kudaka (Doubleday).  Joël, also an HIV/AIDS educator, co-founded Los Angeles’ Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team.  He received his Ethnic Studies B.A. from UC Berkeley & his Creative Writing M.F.A. from Antioch University. 

Leny Mendoza Strobel is Assistant Professor in the American Multicultural Studies Department at Sonoma State University in California. Her newest, A Book of Her Own: Words and Images to Honor the Babaylan, is a mosaic of poems, reflections, found texts, essays, and images that attempts to answer the question: what do you do after you decolonize? Leny Strobel continues her research and insight on the process of decolonization, which she first wrote about in Coming Full Circle. She acknowledges, with a great depth of gratitude, the revolutionary spirit and wisdom of the Filipina Babaylan whose legacy continues to inspire today.

Marianne Villanueva is the author of two short story collections--GINSENG AND OTHER TALES FROM MANILA, which was shortlisted for the Philippines' National Book Award; and MAYOR OF THE ROSES, the inaugural publication of Miami University Press's fiction series. She also co-edited the Filipino women's anthology GOING HOME TO A LANDSCAPE.  Her stories and book reviews have appeared in numerous publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Calyx, the Literary Review, ZYZZYVA, and The Threepenny Review.  Her story, "Silence", was shortlisted for the O. Henry Literature Prize. She lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

IWL: Independent Press Spotlight featuring Jaime Jacinto, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Bob Hsiang, and Philip Kan Gotanda

As part of KSW & Intersection for the Arts' 3-month collaborative project, the 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab (IWL), this Independent Press Spotlight event provides a unique opportunity to meet some of our leading local writers, publishers, and performers and learn first-hand what drives the Bay Area’s local independent publishing community. KSW started its publishing imprint in 1982, and was one of the first outlets for the publication of Asian Pacific American literature. This evening presents work from the IWL workshops and readings from KSW’s publications. Featured readers include poet Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, photographer Bob Hsiang, and poet Jaime Jacinto. 

Date: Tuesday, April 11th, 2006

Time: 7.30PM

Location: Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia Street, @ 16th street (San Francisco)

Cost: $5 - 15, sliding scale.

More about the IWL program
KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP & INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS are proud to present an intensive, collaborative literary program featuring six accomplished writers spanning generations, genres, and styles leading writings workshops with a dozen emerging Bay Area writers.  Both Kearny Street Workshop (est. 1972) and Intersection for the Arts (est. 1965) are organizational mainstays of the Bay Area cultural community, and both have long, distinguished histories of developing, supporting, and cultivating writers over the decades.  Kearny Street Workshop was one of the first outlets for the publication of Asian American Pacific literature, and Intersection for the Arts hosts the longest independent reading series in the state of California.  In joining forces and collaborating on the 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab, we want to provide local emerging writers with the opportunity to challenge, develop, and expand their writing by working with emerging & established writers in a variety of genres; to contribute to the development of new literary forms and language that incorporate multiple forms of creative expression; and to provide the community with an opportunity to engage with new work and new explorations of form and language. 

Intersection for the Arts is San Francisco's oldest alternative art space (est. 1965) and has a long history of presenting new and experimental work in the fields of literature, theater, music and the visual arts, and also in nurturing and supporting the Bay Area's cultural community through service, technical support, and mentorship programs. Intersection provides a place where provocative ideas, diverse art forms, artists, and audiences can intersect one another. Visit Intersection at www.theintersection.org

UPCOMING PUBLIC EVENTS OF THE 2006 INTERGENERATIONAL WRITERS LAB

Sunday May 7th, 2 PM             Reading and discussion at Intersection, featuring Mary Anne Mohanraj

Wednesday June 28th, 7 PM  Chapbook release and reading at Kearny Street Workshop, featuring participants in the program