#Kundiman Retreat

[chenchenwrites]

Now accepting 2019 Kundiman Asian American Creative Writing Retreat applications!

Faculty include Hala Alyan, Myung Mi Kim, Craig Santos Perez, Tania James, & Shawn Wong! Open now through 1/15! Apply and spread the word. 

Ahhhhh. The Kundiman Retreat legit changed my life. Look at the giddiness on my face in this pic, from the 2016 Retreat! What a beautiful home group, led by the brilliant Margaret Rhee. What courage & community, what trees & shorteralls. Give yourself this gift! Apply, apply!

[readmorepoets]

[text id: realizing how much i've wanted my life to be a poem—how much i've wanted everything to matter deeply, as in a poem. every word, every pause, every sound, every silence. every breath. how impossible this often seems, but i do still want it. or, i want it again to live according to one's inner life—how much room is there in this world for that kind of life? it can feel impossible and i sometimes feel like a failure, not living up to outer demands, existing paths and shapes. then again, as a queer person, i'm used to that feeling i keep thinking about the title of June Jordan's collected poems—Directed by Desire. i've been asking myself lately, what are my true desires? and what would my life look like, directed by them? and sometimes it seems my poems are living the life i want, but not me! writing has long been a way for me to find the life, the aliveness i really want. these days it's more like i need to reorganize my life to reflect the writing. to let myself embrace what i've found out from all the poem making i want to be an artist. primarily. and for as many of my days as possible. for as many hours of these days. in a world that would rather artists be anything arts-related that will make someone else money people tell me that when they read my poems, they can tell how driven i was by pleasure in writing them. i want that to be the impression i give, just walking down the street "it has to be a pure pleasure," i remember Sarah Gambito saying about writing activities at the Kundiman retreat. and about just about anything. deep delight as a compass, a map (and an anti-compass, an unmappable experience!) i often think of novelist Jamie O'Neill saying in an interview that the happiest place in the world for him is in the middle of a sentence. at work, at play, swimming in a rhythm. poetry is that place for me. but i want (more of!) my life to be, too i just think that maybe everybody knows, deep down, that life is astonishing. or knew at some point. felt it some days. nights. To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations —Emily Dickinson /end id.]

[mfaunlv]

Meet the New Class!

It is our pleasure to announce the 17 writers who will join our UNLV community this coming Fall 2019 semester! Congratulations to everyone, and welcome to Vegas!

PHD/BLACK MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE FELLOWS

Robert Ren is a writer and teacher in New York. He has a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from Columbia University. Having escaped a corporate career, he currently tutors kids in standardized test prep. He managed to avoid the whole college admissions scandal, but that's only because his photoshop skills are terrible.

Dorothy Solomon (not pictured)

MFA Fiction

Bronwyn Scott-McCharen was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi and graduated from Hendrix College in 2014 with a degree in Sociology and Anthropology. She then lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina for three years, where she immersed herself in the country's vibrant political culture under the guise of academic research. Her interests outside of writing fiction include travel, photography, international politics and history (especially Cold War history). She is currently hard at work on two novels in distinct stages of development--one completed manuscript in need of polish and another in the earliest phase of drafting and intensive research. She speaks Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese and hopes to soon add Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian to her budding repertoire of languages.

Mir Arif developed the idea of storytelling at an early age from strangers—astrologers, street magicians, herbal medicine sellers and other con-artists—frequenting the quiet alleys of his childhood neighborhood in Comilla, a small town in southern Bangladesh. He graduated from University of Dhaka with a degree in International Relations and worked as a staff writer for Arts & Letters. His short stories have appeared in various magazines and e-zines in the US, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. One of his short stories was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2019. He likes to hike and spend time with parakeets.

Karen Gu's fiction has appeared in Paper Darts and The Margins and is forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly. She has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat, and the Loft Literary Center. After five years in Chicago and four years in Minneapolis, she is looking forward to the desert.

Mohammed Jahama often introduces himself as Mo. He likes to write about those kinds of borderland identities and to talk about words. And is excited and grateful for the opportunity to do such things at UNLV.

Sylvia Fox has too many interests and a wandering soul, which is why she writes fiction. Most recently, she spent the last two years in Baltimore, MD, surrounded and inspired by artists. So many aspects of her identity have led her to believe in the subversive power of showing up, taking up space, and creating space for others. She looks forward to continuing to explore this in writing and in community with others.

MFA Poetry

Nick Barnette, an Alabama native, attended Texas Christian University where he received a BA in English and BS in Film-Television-and-Digital Media. Upon graduation, Nick received a Fulbright Fellowship to Greece where he taught ESL in an elementary school in Athens.

Sarah Spaulding is a Tennessee native and a lover of the mountains that raised her. She graduated summa cum laude with her BA in psychology and English with an emphasis in creative writing from Carson-Newman University. There she discovered her penchant for digging around in people’s heads. She often writes poems to dig herself out of her own head. Her work appears in Tennessee’s Best Emerging Poets, Aletheia, Ampersand, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and soon-to-be a guide to Southwestern Iceland. When she’s not busy exploring the mire of humanity, Sarah enjoys dancing in the sunshine, petting other people’s dogs, and helping her father type his memoir.

Jo O’Lone-Hahn is from rural Pennsylvania, and is now on her way to Las Vegas, continuing on her lifelong mission to see the world. She has a B.A. in poetry, studio art, and religious studies from Hampshire College. She writes poems that focus on misunderstood people, naiveté, and the imagination inherent in remembering. Jo has held jobs such as: social worker, tattoo-shop-front-desk-chick, archivist, and tarot-reader-on-the-streets. She is also a member of the Departure Collective, a literary group which conducts workshops, organizes poetry readings, and creates chapbooks. When she’s not writing, she makes mixed-media artworks, wanders around, and befriends grumpy old men.

Nicholas Gruber is a native of Wisconsin, where he earned a BA in Economics from UW-Milwaukee. He is an emerging poet, and--hand to God--a human.

Kathryn McKenzie is a Las Vegas native with a BA in English. She drinks enough tea to match the annual consumption of the entire country of Ireland, and prefers snuggling up in her reading chair with a book, toast, and tea to almost anything in the world. Beyond her deep love of poetry and literature, her passions include: asking to pet every dog she sees, cracking her back after standing up in the movie theater, planning Halloween costumes years in advance, and talking about all the parties she is going to throw, but never actually throwing them. Her poetry has appeared in Neon Dreams and Unincorporated, and her interest in publishing has led her to work with Interim, Witness, and Helen: a literary magazine.

MFA Nonfiction

Christina Berke is a Libra and a teacher from Los Angeles.

Jordon Smith, raised among the Tetons in Wyoming, is a nonfiction writer who enjoys the pleasures and curiosities of the natural world. She completed her undergraduate degree at Utah State University where she met her husband. After graduating, she and her husband moved to Oklahoma where they welcomed a baby boy. Jordon discovered a love of distance running during her time in Oklahoma and is currently training for a marathon in July. When she is not running, she is working in the public library, taking long car rides, or watching children's television shows.

At first look, Soni Brown's life is a series of parodies. She is an immigrant who planned and spent her first vacation in Dubuque, Iowa in January; a former flight attendant afraid of heights and a classically trained chef who prefers Stouffer's frozen meals. As a nonfiction writer, Soni uses her journalism training to write about women, immigrants, and the vagaries of life. A wife and mom since 2016, she is constantly trying to have it all especially a partner who picks up after himself. At the end of the world, you will find Soni nursing a tumbler of herby gin while recounting the year she spent in Brooklyn with Jay-Z. So what if he doesn't know her.

Alyse Burnside: I am a writer and educator currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I received by B.A in English and Gender Studies from the University of Iowa. While I consider myself primarily an essayist, I am interested in working between the confines of genre, combining poetry, narrative, and speculative nonfiction. I am currently working on a collage project of interviews with spiritualists, metaphysical myth, and the neuroscience behind how one creates their own reality. When I’m not writing or working, I am reading, traveling, or watching reality T.V. I am thrilled to be attending UNLV in the fall and am excited to meet the desert for the very first time.

[hyejungkook]

It’s here, it’s here! So incredibly thrilled to share my poem “Spring Coronal” is in the July/August issue of POETRY Magazine! Endless gratitude to Ashley M. Jones for including me alongside so many poets I admire and to all the staff for the care they’ve shown my work.

I would have to transcribe the entire table of contents to include everyone I’m honored to share space with, but it’s a particular joy to be published with Monica Ong Reed, with whom I attended my first Kundiman retreat. I urge you to get a copy of the issue for the sheer pleasure of seeing her beautiful work unfolding and unfolding out, celestially. 

At bedtime tonight, my five-year-old daughter asked to read my poem--I hadn’t realized she meant she would try reading it aloud! It brought tears to my eyes to hear her. She currently won’t permit me to share the video, but she did say I could share this image of her reading.

I hope you will join her in exploring this stunning issue!

[blog-cdaleyoung]

The deadline for applications for the Kundiman Retreat is January 15th and fast approaching. If you or someone you know might benefit from this amazing retreat for Asian American writers, apply or consider sharing this opportunity. Poetry faculty for this summer's retreat will be Sun Yung Shin, Monica Youn, and me. Fiction faculty will include lê thi diem thúy, Jon Pineda, and Karen Tei Yamashita.

[booksilog]

Another Bandwidth for Today

After work yesterday, on my walk to the train, I follow a feeling and turn left instead. I am reciting a poem in my head and find myself walking towards the bookstore. A feeling floats me to the poetry section, where I pick up the only Lucille Clifton book on the shelf and go home with it, hungry for poetry on the eve of this sobering inauguration. Ears and heart straining for another bandwidth:

Li Young Lee at the Kundiman Retreat from Kundiman on Vimeo.

"If you listen to the human voice used on television, in newspapers, even when we traffic with each other—that's within a certain bandwidth. Suddenly, when we hear poetry, that's a different bandwidth. We would never hear that bandwidth if it weren't for poetry. So, the service of poetry is that. That's one of the services of poetry—is that we get to hear what the human mind sounds like when it's infused, when it's inhabited by powers bigger than itself."

*  *  *

At home, I sit cross legged on the floor and pick more books off my shelf, scour the paper pages and the internet, looking for something beautiful and visceral and aching and fighting and defying and alive alive alive.

*  *  *

AUDRE LORDE

A Woman Speaks

Moon marked and touched by sun   my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind.   I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love   permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus   where the restless oceans pound. 

I do not dwell within my birth nor my divinities   who am ageless and half-grown   and still seeking my sisters witches in Dahomey wear me inside their coiled cloths   as our mother did mourning. 

I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic   and the noon's new fury with all your wide futures   promised I am woman and not white.

*  *  *

GLORIA ANZALDÚA 

from El Otro Mexico

1,950 mile-long open wound      dividing a pueblo, a culture                  running down the length of my body,    staking fence rods in my flesh,    splits me    splits me  me raja     me raja

   This is my home    this thin edge of    barbwire.

                                    But the skin of the earth is seamless.      The sea cannot be fenced,                               el mar does not stop at the borders.                       To show the white man what she thought of his      arrogance, Yemayá blew that wire fence down.

   This land was Mexican once,      was Indian always      and is. And     will be again.

*  *  *

ROSS GAY

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe.

*  *  *

LUCILLE CLIFTON

blessing the boats

                                  (at St. Mary’s)

may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back     may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that

*  *  *

There is not one way to do this. To get through this time, to stay afloat, alight, afire. To do the work. 

Here's to the healing, to the love, to the fire, to the fight.

[capjuby]

Dans le jardin de l’animal de mon corps || Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Demande-moi encore comment l’histoire devrait continuer. A quel point le bas-ventre de mon jardin tenait à mettre le printemps en route, a quel point habitée par la faim devais-je dévorer pour en retirer la douceur que j’en voulais. T’effraie-t-elle cette dévoration ? J’ai eu peur moi-même d’à quel point je t’ai promis de te dire si tu me demandais encore de l’eau de l’eau de l’eau. Quelles erreurs ai-je faite en calculant la trajectoire basse du souvenir du râle décroché par l’inhalation, aigue dans les lames de l’épaule exhalant telles ailes, baleines ou lumières de pacotille. Demande-moi encore ce que j’ai offert comme sacrifice au coq gueulant sa trahison du matin. Rémission, quelle lame acérée pressé-je fort contre mon corps.

version originale sur poets.org 

Silver of stone magazine

“At the 2018 Kundiman retreat, Sun Yung Shin led an exercise using Bhanu Kapil’s ‘Humanimal [I want to make a dark mirror out of writing].’ After that, it seemed I could only write variations of this one poem, about the (in)congruencies of which stories we tell or don’t tell or want to tell ourselves and each other. I have spent a lifetime studying forgiveness and am constantly humbled by how complicated, impossible, and necessary it is to every memory.”

—Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and is currently co-translating the selected works of Korean poet Yi Won. She serves as program coordinator for the Miami Book Fair and lives in Miami, Florida.

https://www.marcicalabretta.com/

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/marci-calabretta-cancio-bello

[joncronshawauthor]

The Ray Bradbury Challenge: Day 643

The Ray Bradbury Challenge: Day 643

Short story: Cretaceous Crisis by Andy Conduit-Turner, listened to on The Other Stories podcast, from May 2018.

Poem: Pomegranate by Mary Cisper, listened to on the PoetryNow podcast, from May 2018. Highly Recommended.

Essay: Aesthetic Labour by Chris Warhurst, listened to on the BBC’s Four Thought podcast, from May 2018. Highly Recommended.

What is the Ray Bradbury Challenge?

[minoritiesinpublishing]

Applications are now open for the 2019 Kundiman Retreat! With master classes taught by nationally renowned poets and fiction writers, the Kundiman Retreat establishes a nurturing community for Asian American writers.

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY, ROSE HILL NEW YORK CITY JUNE 19 – 23, 2019

Application Period: December 1st – January 15th

Poetry Hala Alyan Myung Mi Kim Craig Santos Perez

Fiction Tania James Shawn Wong Third Faculty TBA

Find out more about the application process here. You can also read more testimonials from past and current fellows.

[chenchenwrites]

I recently became a recurring donor to Kundiman because I have witnessed what powerful change & community is possible when we work in truly collaborative & big-hearted ways. The Kundiman Writers Retreats I’ve participated in (2014 & 2016) were unforgettable experiences that led to deep friendships. Kundiman-sponsored readings & events are among my all-time favorites in the poetry world. & I look forward each year to learning of the new winner of the Kundiman Book Prize. 

Please consider supporting the future of Asian American literature by becoming a recurring donor or giving what you can.

[hyejungkook]

I'm still pinching myself because I can hardly believe I'm in this special issue of the Massachusetts Review with so many amazing writers who’ve helped shape me into the poet I am today. From reading John Yau and Arthur Sze in college to meeting Kazim Ali at AWP in 2003 to weeping with Joseph O. Legaspi at my first Kundiman retreat in 2007 to being in home group with Sally Wen Mao and Timothy Yu in the 2010 retreat, plus other folx I've gotten to know in real life, online, and on the page. So much to savor here—my heart feels full to overflowing. 

Deepest thanks to everyone at the Massachusetts Review (especially Ellen Doré Watson and Emily Wojcik), the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and the University of Connecticut Institute for Asian and Asian American Studies for creating Asian American Literature: Rethinking the Canon, and to guest editors Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Rajini Srikanth, and Min Hyoung Song for including me in this group of remarkable voices! 

You can read the editors’ introduction and find the link to order a copy here.

[minoritiesinpublishing]

This sounds great and the faculty is amazing! Apply apply! If you’re on break take time to do an application.