Friday July 26, 2019 7-9:30pm
Arc Gallery & Studios
Curated by Michelle Lin and Kazumi Chin
Pre-sale $8 | Door $12 | Supporter $20 (includes reserved seats)
On Friday, July 26, 2019, KSW Presents: “Monsters I Have Been,” a poetry reading featuring Kenji Liu (Monsters I Have Been) and MT Vallarta. This event explores the many possibilities of our relationships to gender and gendering, and to reimagine ways of being in gender and being of gender, so that we can create space for ourselves in the world. The title of this event comes from Kenji Liu's latest poetry collection.
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 Submit: Submit work that explores this upcoming event's theme, that can be read or performed within 3 minutes or less.
FEATURES
KENJI C. LIU is author of Monsters I Have Been (Alice James Books, 2019) and Map of an Onion, national winner of the 2015 Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize (Inlandia Institute). His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Gulf Coast, Apogee, and elsewhere, including two chapbooks, Craters: A Field Guide (2017) and You Left Without Your Shoes (2009). An alumnus of Kundiman, VONA/Voices, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the Community of Writers, he lives in Los Angeles.
ABOUT MONSTERS I HAVE BEEN:
“Kenji C. Liu’s Monsters I Have Been writhes knotty tentacles through textual boneyards, disturbing screenplays, theoretical works, and literatures in their coffined-off sleeps. What it draws back are parts through which the poet might, as Lucille Clifton wrote, make up ‘a kind of life’ in the global slaughterhouse of heteropatriarchy and racism. Sharp, protean, dexterous, and discontent—Liu’s collection shows where the bodies have been buried, and that many won’t stay dead. No doubt, this book is alive as all hell.”
—Douglas Kearney
MT VALLARTA is a poet and Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where they study queer theory, feminist theory, and Filipinx poetics. A Kundiman Fellow, their work can be found in Nat. Brut, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Apogee Journal, TAYO Literary Magazine, and others. Their poem, “we bleed hybridity—” was a finalist in Rabbit Catastrophe Press’s 2018 Real Good Poem Prize. MT is also a co-contributor to The Blood-Jet Writing Hour, a podcast where poets and writers share their work and discuss their craft. They were raised and live in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles.