Celebrating Kundiman: Cathy Linh Che, Chen Chen, & Jenny Xie

On March 10th, at 5pm pacific, we’ll welcome poet and Kundiman Executive Director Cathy Linh Che (author of Split) to the ARC virtual stage, along with two poets who’ve benefited from the teaching and mentorship in the remarkable Kundiman Asian American writing collective: Chen Chen (author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities) and Jenny Xie (author of Eye Level). After their readings, the poets will be in conversation with 2021/22 ARC Poetry Fellow Lindsay Choi and poet and ARC program coordinator Sophia Hussain. This event is part of ARC’s Poetry and the Senses initiative generously sponsored by Engaging the Senses Foundation. The reading will be livestreamed and live captioned, and is free and open to the public.

Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split(Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Her work has been published in The New Republic, The Nation, McSweeney’s, and Poetry magazine. She has received awards from MacDowell, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Djerassi, Willapa Bay AiR, The Anderson Center, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center,  Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Poets House, Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency, the Jerome Foundation. She has taught at the 92nd Street Y, New York University, Fordham University, Sierra Nevada College, and the Polytechnic University at NYU. She was Sierra Nevada College’s Distinguished Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence. She is working on a poetry manuscript, a creative nonfiction manuscript, and a short documentary, with director Christopher Radcliff, on her parents’ experiences as refugees who played extras on Apocalypse Now. She is currently a PhD student in English at Fordham University. She serves as Executive Director at Kundiman and lives on the traditional lands of the Lenape people.

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, among other honors, and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency. His work appears/is forthcoming in many publications, including Poetry, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, and three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, and 2021). Poets & Writers Magazine featured him as one of “Ten Poets Who Will Change the World.” He has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Kundiman. Lambda Literary, and the National Endowment for the Arts. With a brilliant team, he edits the literary journal Underblong. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence and lives in Waltham, MA with his partner Jeff Gilbert and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles.

Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and the PEN Open Book Award, and recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. Her chapbook, Nowhere to Arrive, won the Drinking Gourd Prize, and was published by Northwestern University Press. Her work has appeared in Poetry, ​New York Times Magazine, and Tin House, among other publications, and she has been supported by fellowships and grants from Kundiman, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Poets & Writers. She currently lives in New York.

최 Lindsay | Lindsay Choi is a poet and translator working between English, Korean, and Swedish. They are the author of Transverse (Futurepoem, 2021), as well as a chapbook, Matrices (speCt! books, 2017). More of their work can be found in Omniverse, Aster(ix) Journal, and elsewhere, including a forthcoming sound piece for amatter. They are a Kundiman fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in English literature at UC Berkeley. With Noah Ross, they are a founding co-editor of the chapbook press MO(0)ON/IO. Their work has been translated to French, and appears in NIOQUES, 22/23: Nouvelle Poésie Des États-Unis (New U.S. Poetry), edited by DoubleChange Collective, and translated by Abigail Lang. Visit them at lindsaychoi.com.

Sophia Hussain is Programs Assistant at the Arts Research Center and Events Coordinator at the Berkeley Center for New Media. Her work has been featured in the Poetry Project, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and more.