A Celebration of AAPI Writers

Join the Guild Complex, RHINO Poetry, Kundiman, and Luya Poetry for a celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander month with an evening of poetry readings from AAPI poets. 

***We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speaker and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments and books available for purchase from the authors.***

RHINO Poetry Readers

Ignatius Valentine Aloysius earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he teaches writing and experimentation. He is the author of the literary novel Fishhead. Republic of Want (Tortoise Books), and his prose and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in Allium, a Journal of Poetry & Prose, Cold Mountain Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Porter Gulch Review, Trampset, Thanatos Review, Roi Fainéant Press, and Portable Gray (U of Chicago Press), among others. A poetry collection he co-authored with David Allen Sullivan, poet laureate of Santa Cruz, CA, is forthcoming on Hummingbird Poetry Press. Ignatius curates and hosts the popular reading series Sunday Salon Chicago, and he is a Co-Chair of the Curatorial Board at Ragdale Foundation, where he is also a member of its Board of Trustees. Ignatius is currently shopping a lyrical novel and also his second poetry collection. Visit https://linktr.ee/ignatius.valentine.aloysius

Noh Anothai’s translations range from classical Siamese poets to contemporary Thai authors, including several who have received or been nominated for the Southeast Asian Writers (SEAWrite) Award. His work has been featured in Asymptote, World Literature Today, and Two Lines, and he has served as a judge for the Lucien Stryk Prize for Asian Literature in Translation. Anothai was a Helen Degen Cohen Summer Reading Fellow with RHINO Poetry, and later also served as an Associate Editor. Currently, he is a co-editor for the Best Literary Translations anthology, whose first edition featured guest editor Jane Hirshfield.

Kundiman Readers

Jess Yuan is a poet, educator, and architect. She is the author of Slow Render (2024), winner of the Airlie Prize, and Threshold Amnesia (2020), winner of the Yemassee Chapbook Contest. She is a Kundiman Fellow, and her poems appear in Best New Poets, Tupelo Quarterly Review, jubilat, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.

Meg Kim is a poet from Southern Oregon currently living in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Sundog Lit, and Gulf Coast, among others, and her debut chapbook, INVISIBLE CARTOGRAPHIES, is forthcoming summer 2024 with New Delta Review.

LUYA Poetry Readers

Chris Aldana (she/they) is the author of The Water We Swim In (Sampaguita Press, 2023). They are a queer, Filipinx artist, educator, and community organizer based in Chicago. She is the founder and creative director of Luya, a poetry organization that centers the voices of people of color.

Czaerra Galicinao Ucol (they/she) is a queer Filipino writer from Chicago. A 2020 graduate of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at New York University, their work has appeared in Marías at Sampaguitas, beestung, and Walang Hiya. They are a Best New Poets 2021 and Best of the Net 2021 nominee. They are also the Programs and Communications Director of Luya, a local grassroots poetry organization centering people of color, which was nominated for Best Poetry Organization in Chicago Reader’s Best of 2021 Awards. In their free time, they like cooking new recipes, practicing Filipino Martial Arts, and listening to Lake Michigan’s waves crashing. Their debut chapbook, PISCES URGES, was released in Summer 2023.

Dipika Mukherjee is the author of the novels Shambala Junction and Ode to Broken Things, and the story collection, Rules of Desire. Her work is included in The Best Small Fictions 2019 and appears in World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, Del Sol Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hemispheres, Orion, Scroll, The Edge and more. Her third poetry collection, Dialect of Distant Harbors, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in October 2022 and a collection of travel essays, Writers Postcards, has been accepted for publication by Penguin Random House (SEA) for 2023. She teaches at StoryStudio Chicago and the Graham School at University of Chicago. She holds a PhD in English (Sociolinguistics) from Texas A&M University.