The Alphabet of Distant Harbours

The Guild Complex continues a new reading platform to foreground Asian / American authors and themes. Curated by Dipika Mukherjee, this spring’s program—The Alphabet of Distant Harbours—features Toni Nealie, Zhou Sivan, and Angela Narciso Torres.

“The Alphabet of Distant Harbours’” will bring together writers who explore the suppression as well as expression of identity in the Asian diaspora. Zhou Sivan (also Nicholas Y. H. Wong) traces the secret lives of ‘M’ in his poems — Malacca, the Malay Archipelago, myth, Maeterlinck, mother and matter, marriage, Medusa, misanthropes and misbehaving — in exquisitely wrought poetry. Toni Nealie, who moved to Chicagoland from New Zealand, raises questions about the shame and fear suppressed through generations and how they continue to manifest in her thought-provoking creative nonfiction. Award-winning poet Angela Narciso Torres will read from her significant body of work to explore the varying degrees of elasticity in the distances between continents, families, lovers, memory and reality, waking and dreaming, while invoking her native Philippines and the various landscapes in which she has lived.” ~Dipika Mukherjee

This program is presented in partnership with the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and will be held in the Garland Room (first floor) of the Chicago Cultural Center. The programs is free of charge and open to the public. Arrive early to sign up for the open mic.

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ABOUT OUR CURATOR

Dipika Mukherjee is a writer and sociolinguist. Her debut novel, Thunder Demons (Gyaana 2011), was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize. She lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University.

ABOUT OUR AUTHORS

Toni Nealie was born in New Zealand. A former journalist, she worked in N.Z. and the U.K. before moving to Illinois where she teaches and writes. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing – Nonfiction – from Columbia College Chicago. Recent essays appeared in Guernica and The Prague Review. Her first collection of essays is forthcoming from Curbside Splendor.

Zhou Sivan was born in Malaysia. His poems have appeared in Asymptote, The Salt Anthology of New Writing 2013, Columbia Review, The Rialto, QLRS, and Southeast Asian Review of English, sometimes under the name Nicholas Y. H. Wong. He is pursuing his Ph.D. in comparative literature at University of Chicago and is managing editor at Chicago Review.

Angela Narciso Torres’s first book of poetry, Blood Orange, won the Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry. Recent work appears in Pirene’s Fountain, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, and Drunken Boat. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Ragdale Foundation, and Midwest Writing Center. Her poetry has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in Chicago, where she teaches poetry workshops and serves as a senior poetry editor for RHINO. www.angelanarcisotorres.com