LAMBDA LITFEST LA 2017 (www.lambdalitfest.org) PRESENTS:

Poetics of Self [Re/De] Construction: Litanies to My Brown Heavenly Body (honoring Mark Aguhar)

In homage to Pilipinx trans, femme artist, Mark Aguhar, Poetics of Self [Re/De] Construction: Litanies to My Brown Heavenly Body, queer writers-of-color in this creative reading and panel will explore how our very bodies become litanies, invocations of our existence, our world-making possibilities as what Parreñas Shimizu calls “sites for imagining alternative realities.”

Performers:

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and forthcoming spring 2017 from BOA Editions, Ltd. Chen’s work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed, and The Best American Poetry. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda Literary, and the Saltonstall Foundation. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. For more, visit chenchenwrites.com. 

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is a poet, essayist, and artist born in the borderlands in McAllen, Texas. Her poems have appeared in PBS Newshour, Waxwing, Caketrain, DIAGRAM, DREGINALD, The Feminist Wire, The Western Humanities Review, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and elsewhere. Most recently, she has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and her book, BEAST MERIDIAN, was a finalist at Nightboat, FuturePoem, Saturnalia, and Willow Books, and is forthcoming from Noemi Press in early 2017. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, and her hometown is Houston, Texas.

Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017) as well as the co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press, 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). A Kundiman, Lambda and Callaloo Fellow, they are part of the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. They have also been awarded fellowships from Can Serrat, Millay Colony for the Arts, the Norman Mailer Center and Imagining America. They serve on the Executive Board of Thinking Its Presence: Race, Advocacy, Solidarity in the Arts as the Director of Membership and Social Media and are a senior editor for The Conversant. Currently, they teach poetry at Sam Houston State University as an Assistant Professor in the English department.www.chinginchen.com

Kazumi Chin is the author of Having a Coke with Godzilla (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). His work has appeared in GlitterMob, HEArt, Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week series, and elsewhere. His blog, GODZILIANA H8S UR COLONIAL BS can be found at kazumichin.wordpress.com. When he grows up, he wants to be Ariana Grande.

Michelle Lin is the author of A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). Her latest poems can be found in HEArt, Apogee, Powder Keg Magazine, and more. She has taught for the LEAPS summer program, Gluck Fellows Program for the Arts, Young Writer’s Institute, and the University of Pittsburgh. She has performed for Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture, grlhood--redefining the I // here I am, Litquake, and more. A former editor for journals Hot Metal Bridge, B.E. Quarterly, and Mosaic, she currently serves as Poetry Reader for Twelfth House Journal. 

Belinda Bellinger is a born and bred “Sucka Free City” (San Francisco Bay Area) native, fourteen-year veteran community organizer, and soon-to-be Sarah Lawrence College alum that has been writing since she was four. She first tried her hand at performance poetry with her high school crew, Sable Vitality. She then began writing, producing, and performing spoken word theater with the Bay Area-based group, Colored Ink. She has been blessed to share the stage with Piri Thomas, Devorah Major, Ise Lyfe, Sonia Sanchez and many other gifted spirits. She was recently awarded a Citation of Excellence for her winning poem “Cherry & Blanton” in the “Roads to Equality” Poetry Prizes as part of Sarah Lawrence College’s Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides of 1961. She is an Aries-Taurus cuspian whose personal interests includes anything that builds transformative justice. When she’s not shining light on the world with her laughter, you can find her trying to spread the fierce essence of the hippie.thug.chic.nerd that she is lyrically through her poems.

Muriel Leung is the author of Bone Confetti (Noemi Press 2016). Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction can be found or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, Ghost Proposal, Jellyfish Magazine, inter/rupture, and others. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and is a regular contributor to the Blood-Jet Writing Hour poetry podcast. She is also a Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. 

Born in Iloilo City, Philippines, Angela Peñaredondo is a Pilipinx/Pin@y poet and artist. Peñaredondo is the author of the chapbook, Maroon (Jamii Publications) and the book, All Things Lose Thousands of Times (winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize, Inlandia Institute). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, AAWW’s The Margins, Four Way Review, Cream City Review and elsewhere. Angela resides in Southern California, drifting between deserts, beaches, lowly cities and socially engineered suburbs.

Melissa R. Sipin is a writer from Carson, CA. She won Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open and the Washington Square Review’s Flash Fiction Prize. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology on Philippine myths (Carayan Press 2014), and her work is in Guernica Magazine, PEN/Guernica Flash Series, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Eleven Eleven Magazine, and Amazon’s literary journal Day One, among others. Cofounder of TAYO Literary Magazine, her work has won scholarships and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Poets & Writers Inc., Squaw Valley's Community of Writers, Kundiman Fiction Retreat, VONA/Voices Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and was shortlisted for the David Wong Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. She was the Community Engagement Fellow at Mills College and is represented by Sarah Levitt at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency in New York City. More at msipin.com.

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Now more than ever, our stories matter. Don’t miss #LambdaLitFest Los Angeles, a FREE, weeklong literary festival that celebrates and honors and expands on the rich, diverse tradition of LGBTQ writers and readers in the Southland. Register now: http://bit.ly/2kqiIRi