Monthlong writing residency in Portland, OR. Hosted by Portland Community College.
Poetry faculty. More details to come.
LaConner, WA. Hosted by the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. More info to come.
Paterson, NJ.
Generative workshop - 10:00am - 12:00pm
Reading (with another writer TBA) - 1:00pm
Virtual event hosted by the Philomathean Society, a student-led literary society at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I had a friend who…”: Writing Friendship with Chen Chen (via Zoom)
Inspired by recent cultural discourse on the complex power of friendship, this multi-genre generative workshop explores a variety of approaches to writing about/from friendship. We’ll start with a discussion of Mary Ruefle’s Pushcart Prize-winning essay “Dear Friends” (one of her best, most moving prose pieces, I think) before taking a look at a handful of friendship-focused piece by a range of poets and writers as potential models for our own writing. I’ll provide some writing prompts, including one that involves texts/DMs/emails with friends. We’ll think about what friendship means in a contemporary era of friending and following, subscribing and subtweeting, a global pandemic and generational divides as well as intersections. How do we make friends today? How do we maintain friendships? How do we, when needed, “break up” with friends in ways that don’t sound like a memo from HR? These deeply personal questions, among others (including the more craft-related ones!), will drive this session, this gathering of texts and— one can hope—friends.
Second set of readings and class visits at colleges and universities across Georgia.
Tues. Apr. 9: Valdosta University
Weds. Apr. 10: Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
Thurs. Apr. 11: Georgia Southern University
Fri. Apr. 12: Savannah State University
Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum. Co-sponsored by the creative writing program.
Anthony DiPietro, Deputy Director of the Rose Art Museum, will be launching his debut poetry collection, kiss & release (Unsolicited Press). I’ll be reading from my work in support.
About the book: You may assume “this is a failed romantic gesture” or else “the best thing that happened to sex/since the devil invented it.” If a poetry book could sleep around, get divorced, and fall in love with a hookup, that book would be kiss & release. If a book could kill a snake to revive a dead lover, this one would. This book parties, hollers (and whispers) at hotties, and craves escape: “I will invent a way.” If you’ve ever been bored during group sex, this book’s for you. Do not read while driving: the book’s already driving too fast, singing loudly, and using Siri to reply to fuckboys.
Civic Pavilion in Boston. Hosted by Porsha Olayiwola, Poet Laureate of the City of Boston.
Open mic, then featured reading.
I’ll be reading at 7:30pm.
Reading with Jason Koo. Q&A and book signing to follow readings. Hosted by Cate Marvin.
We are fortunate to be hosting two exceptional poets, Chen Chen and Jason Koo, next Tuesday, Apr. 2 at the Center for the Arts Building 1P) Lecture Hall (Room 119) from 2:30pm to 3:30pm to launch National Poetry Month.
Join us for some great poems and great people, along with pizza and wraps.
This CLUE event is sponsored by LOST IN THOUGHT, CSI’s creative arts magazine.
By the Division of Academic Affairs
Friday, March 22, 11:30 AM—12:45 PM
SAS Writer's Craft
QUEERING THE LOVE POEM with CHEN CHEN
Though perhaps the love poem has long been queer (think of Shakespeare’s sonnets and Sappho’s fragments), in this generative session we’ll discuss contemporary examples that further (or differently) queer and complicate the love poem—and indeed, love itself. How can a love poem also be a political poem? A protest poem? Or a political poem for how it reimagines relationships of all kinds? A queer love poem may be about a speaker and a beloved (or beloveds), but it may also be about friendship, community, family both blood and chosen, self-love, caring for the planet, and speaking back to the social systems that limit agency, that attempt to erase queerness. We’ll read work by Essex Hemphill, Natalie Diaz, Jericho Brown, Charif Shanahan, Muriel Leung, Justin Chin, F. Douglas Brown, Yanyi, and others as models for our own writing from and into queerer forms of love.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal B
Included in SAS Weekend Registration or $25
*
Saturday, March 23, 11:30 AM—12:45 PM
Literary Discussion
THE PROFANE AND SACRED/POETRY
This discussion explores ruptures and raptures that occur when poets run headlong into gods and religions in their writing. In no small part a rejection of what “the canon” has historically held sacred, these writers talk about what it means to create space for foreign bodies, subversive thoughts, and transgressive actions on the literary (mine)field. How do we say the unsayable? When our cultures, histories, lived experiences, and in fact the bodies we inhabit are rendered other or less than or profane, how do we elevate them, how do we make space for them in the world? How do we hold holy (however we define that word) what we've been told to forget, to bury? These authors reflect on what it means to manifest our deepest selves in our writing, even when—especially when—our most sacred selves are selves that the world wants to look away from.
Panelists: Jubi Ariolla-Headley, Stephanie Burt, Chen Chen, Erin Hoover, and Ed Madden
Moderator: Brad Richard
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal C
*
Sunday, March 24, 11:30 AM—12:45 PM
Reading Series
SAINTS AND SINNERS: WRITERS READ
Sponsored by the John Burton Harter Foundation
Take the rare opportunity to hear authors in their own voice. This highlighted Festival event has authors share their vivid imaginations with their new creations, or revisiting a past work that holds special meaning. Please join us in welcoming: Stephanie Burt, Chen Chen, Lucian Childs, AE Hines, Rose Norman, Ed Madden, and T.Q. Sims for this year’s mix of established and exciting new writers.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal D
Sunday, March 24, 7pm
QUEER AF OFFSITE
Hosted by LMNL Arts
Come listen to work by Chen Chen, Kazim Ali, Ching-In Chen, Meghan Sullivan, Daniel Meltz, T.Q. Sims, Kay Murphy, Nayelly Barrios, A.E. Hines, & Charlie J. Stephens.
@ The Domino
Dallas, TX.
Mon. Mar. 18, 1:20-2:20pm CST - “New & Selected: Poets on Formal Innovation & Inheritance”: Roundtable discussion, Mag Gabbert, Tarfia Faizullah, and Chen Chen. All events, unless otherwise noted, will be held in Bridwell Library’s Methodist Collection Reading Room (Blue Room).
Tues. Mar. 19, 6:30pm CST - Group poetry reading: Participants will include Stephanie Burt, Maureen McLane, Evie Shockley, Mag Gabbert, Katie Condon, Samyak Shertok, Chen Chen, and Tarfia Faizullah. Deejay: Kendra Allen. Hosted by the Southwest Review in the Club Room at Ozona Grill (4615 Greenville Ave).
The SMU Symposium on Poetic Form will gather scholars and poets on the SMU campus for two full days to discuss poetic form in practice and theory. Panels will consider topics such as Renaissance, eighteenth-century, and nineteenth-century poetics, hip hop, the sonnet, “uncreative writing,” and prosody. The Historical Poetics Reading Group will conduct a discussion of Francis Barton Gummere’s The Beginnings of Poetry. Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, will give a reading and join Virginia Jackson in a conversation about poetry.
Reception from 6:00 to 7:00pm.
7:00-8:30pm: poetry reading, followed by brief intermission, then a 30- to 40-minute poetry workshop / reading as part of The Wordsmiths.
Hosted by Sine Theta Magazine, Red Bean Poetry, & CUHK English. Join Chen Chen, Minying Huang, Yanyi, & Jiaqi Kang (moderator) to discuss the labor that keeps poetry going, labor as a theme & more.
[Note: I’ll be joining at 3:30pm EST due to a prior commitment.]
9:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST / 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM EST on Zoom
Craft Intensive:
Happy Poems!
Do they exist? If they do, can they be as good as the poems that wreck us? Can a happy poem wreck us? And how can we avoid sentimentality or is that a risk we just need to take? In this generative session, we’ll look at Ross Gay’s essay, “Joy Is Such a Human Madness” (from his collection The Book of Delights) as a compass for our discussion and a starting point for writing about/from/through happiness, joy, and pleasure. Within the genre of happy poem, we’ll think about poems that celebrate love, sex, community, and connection of various kinds. We’ll examine some model poems by Ross Gay and by others, including Czesław Miłosz, Derrick Austin, Jane Wong, Nikky Finney, and Yanyi. Come prepared to engage in jubilant experimentation.
Info about Anaphora Literary Arts.
I’ll be facilitating the poetry workshop on Saturday, Feb. 17, Monday, Feb. 19, Wednesday, Feb. 21, and Friday, Feb. 23.
On Sunday, Feb. 18, I’ll be giving the following craft talk:
Against the Universal, Toward the Communal
In this talk, I’ll present a critique of the expectation for creative work to be “universal” by examining how often this term actually refers to/caters to a particular audience and gaze. In place of the universal, I’ll suggest a framework of the communal, one that celebrates difference and listens to (rather than dismisses) anger that demands accountability. Writers and thinkers such as Sarah Gambito, Jennifer Chang, Marilyn Chin, Paul Celan, Sara Ahmed, and Toni Morrison will inform my remarks. Oh and I’ll discuss a beautifully melancholic and homoerotic movie in the Sailor Moon franchise. While my main examples will come from poetry, I believe these ideas can apply across genres, so all participants are most certainly welcome!
Thurs. 2/8/24
[off-site] A very gay literary happy hour at Uptown Lounge 5:00-7:00pm CST
With Nicole Tallman, Adrian Dallas Frandle, Dior J. Stephens, Alex Carrigan, Tyler Gillespie, & more
[off-site] Hooligan Mag and Cobra Milk reading at Milwaukee Delicatessen Company 7:30pm CST
With Gem Arbogast, Meg Kim, Julián Martinez, Rita Mookerjee, Hikari Leilani Miya, & Karla Lamb
Hosted by Jo Blair Cipriano & Dia Roth
Fri. 2/9/24
Panel: Say Gay Today: Writing in the Backward Climate of Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation 12:10pm - 1:25pm CST
With Nicole Tallman, Dior J. Stephens, Caridad Moro-Gronlier, & Dustin Brookshire
Location: Room 2103C, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level
Reading: Generations: A Reading & Conversation Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts & The Asian American Writers’ Workshop 1:45pm - 3:00pm CST
With Tina Chang, Marilyn Chin, & Kimiko Hahn + moderated by Jafreen Uddin
Location: Grand Ballroom A, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2
Sat. 2/10/14
Panel: Poets Learn to Pitch (& other practical tips for writing and publishing prose) 1:45pm - 3:00pm CST
Location: Room 2503AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2
With Nancy Reddy, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Tiana Clark, & Hope Wabuke
[off-site] Gulf Coast / Bat City Review / The Texas Review / Texas Review Press reading at The Stray Cat 7:00-9:00pm CST
With Sarah Audsley, K. Iver, Vincent James, Petra Kuppers, Sebastian Merrill, Phoebe Oathout, Chloe Chun Seim, Said Shaiye, Hua Xi, & Angelique Zobitz
Featured reading, followed by student readings as part of the Asian Art/Writing Magazine, Positions, Fall/Winter Issue Launch Party at Princeton.
Reading on the theme of family. Hosted by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach. With Ananda Lima, Irène Mathieu, & Oliver de la Paz. Registration.
Do happy poems exist? If they do, can they be as good as the poems that wreck us? Can a happy poem wreck us? And how can we avoid sentimentality or, is that a risk we just need to take? In this generative session, we’ll look at Ross Gay’s essay, “Joy Is Such a Human Madness” (from his collection The Book of Delights) as a compass for our discussion and a starting point for writing about/from/through happiness, joy, and pleasure. Within the genre of happy poems, we’ll think about poems that celebrate love, sex, community, and connection of various kinds. We’ll examine some model poems by Gay and others, including Czesław Miłosz, Jane Hirshfield, and Derrick Austin. Come prepared to engage in jubilant experimentation.
I’ll be teaching in the second half the residency. I’m offering a new four-day elective workshop: Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction. 9:30am-12:00pm each day.
Description: In this elective workshop, we'll explore the many hybrid possibilities of writing in genres that straddle the line between verse and prose, namely prose poetry and flash fiction. We'll read and discuss writers such as Bhanu Kapil, Lydia Davis, Monica Youn, and Amy Hempel, to enrich our understanding of how and why we might use these genres to examine a wide range of urgent subjects, from colonialism and gendered violence to urban alienation and the rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the US. We'll think together about the ways prose poetry and flash fiction overlap—and where they diverge. And, of course, we'll write a lot and provide generous, attentive feedback on the new work.
Also:
Weds. Jan. 10:
1:30-3:00pm: Faculty Seminar - “ ‘I Had a Friend Who...’ – Writing Friendship”
3:15-3:45pm: Meet the Mentors Panel - with JJ Amaworo Wilson, Aaron Hamburger, Robert Levy, & Cate Marvin
7:00pm: Faculty Reading - with JJ Amaworo Wilson & John Florio
Fri. Jan. 12:
7:00pm: Writing for Inclusivity and Social Equity (WISE): The Task Before Us - Ethical Storytelling with David Anthony Durham (moderator), Linda Louise Nelson (guest), Chen Chen, & Monica Prince
I’ll be teaching a peer feedback workshop for poetry, doing a faculty reading, and giving this talk:
RISKING GOOFINESS: HUMOR, PLAY, AGENCY, AND THE POLITICAL
Can a poem make you laugh? And think at the same time? And want to act for social change?? In this talk, I’ll explore the craft of using humor in an exciting variety of ways in contemporary poetry. I’ll consider how humor is a racialized and gendered phenomenon, rejecting notions of universality in favor of a communal and contextual approach. This talk will weave personal narrative with close readings of poems by Sarah Gambito, Mary Ruefle, and Justin Chin. All texts will be provided as a handout. As poets and academics alike love saying, I hope this will ultimately be more of a conversation, a dialogue, rather than a lecture. But really. Seriously. And though poetry will be my focus here, I welcome all genres.
On Zoom.
Happy Poems!
Do they exist? If they do, can they be as good as the poems that wreck us? Can a happy poem wreck us? And how can we avoid sentimentality or is that a risk we just need to take? In this generative session, we’ll look at Ross Gay’s essay, “Joy Is Such a Human Madness” (from his collection The Book of Delights) as a compass for our discussion and a starting point for writing about/from/through happiness, joy, and pleasure. Within the genre of happy poem, we’ll think about poems that celebrate love, sex, community, and connection of various kinds. We’ll examine some model poems by Ross Gay and by others, including Czesław Miłosz, Derrick Austin, Jane Wong, Nikky Finney, and Yanyi. Come prepared to engage in jubilant experimentation.
Winter residency for the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. Teaching a poetry workshop, giving a craft talk and a reading.
12:30pm - 2:00pm EST / 5:30pm - 7:00pm UK time
State of Play: Sarah Howe, Chen Chen, Lora Supandi with Prof Elleke Boehmer
Poetry from anthology contributors & conversation with Prof Elleke Boehmer. This event celebrates an anthology of correspondence—State of Play: Poets of East & Southeast Asian Heritage in Conversation, edited by Eddie Tay & Jennifer Wong.
This is a hybrid event, with Sarah Howe and Prof Elleke Boehmer in person at Stanford House in Oxford; Lora Supandi and I will be joining virtually. More info + RSVP.
Saturday, 11/18, 4pm: Reframing the Portrait of the Poet: a Reading & Conversation with Maghoney L. Browne, Chen Chen, Marilyn Chin, & Sam Sax.
Room 8303 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, Fl 33132 United States
MAHOGANY L. BROWNE’s Chrome Valley: Poems offers an intricate portrait of Black womanhood in America, capturing the pleasures and pangs of young love and motherhood, and reveling in the beauty of the undaunted self-determination passed down from Black woman to Black woman. The poems in CHEN CHEN’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency: Poems a acknowledge and name the persistent threat of violence, while also reminding its reader of joys both small and large: West Texas sunsets, a lover’s body, family both blood and chosen. MARILYN CHINis always reinventing herself. In Sage: Poems, she mixes Chinese poems with hip-hop rhymes, pulls farcical details from an old diary, and confronts the disturbing rise in violence against Asian Americans. PIG: Poems by SAM SAX interrogates the broadest ideas surrounding the humble creature – farm animal, men/masculinity, police and state violence, desire, queerness, global food systems, religion/Judaism, and law – to reimagine various chaotic histories of the body, faith, ecology, desire, hygiene, and power.
Set of readings and class visits to colleges and universities in Georgia. More info to come.
With a second set in spring 2024.
At Princeton University.
5:00-5:30 PM Pre-Sign Books for Faculty
5:30-6:00 PM Welcome Reception
6:00-6:40 PM Poetry Reading
6:40-7:00 PM Concluding Reception
An online evening of poetry, raising funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
3pm Eastern in the US / 7pm UK
Donate to get tickets to the event. (Other ways of attending the event are available, as well.)
Poets for Palestine come together to express their unwavering support and solidarity to all those affected by the tragic conflict in the region. Like so many of you we feel distraught and helpless as events continue to unfold, with thousands of Palestinian civilians, half of whom are children, now dead or in desperate need of aid following Israel's breaches of international law and the Geneva Convention.
This event will see short readings and pre-recordings from prominent international poets who have openly supported the rights of Palestinian people, and called to end Israeli occupation.
Please donate what you can (suggested donation £10, but it would be wonderful if you could donate £20, £50 or more, and we understand if your current circumstances do not permit – if you are unable to donate but would like to attend the event in solidarity, please email Patricia on press@outspokenldn.com – no proof of circumstance required.)
All proceeds will go directly to Medical Aid for Palestinians.
***NOTE: EVENT TIME / CLOCK CHANGES*** Please note that the clocks went back one hour in the UK and Europe on Sunday 29 October. The event will start at 7PM UK (GMT) on Monday 30 October — Please double-check the event time in your time zone.
The evening will be hosted by Hanan Issa, and readers will include:
Lowkey, Chen Chen, Omar Sakr, Mira Mattar, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Leone Ross, Zaffar Kunial, Natalie Shapero, Zeina Hashem Beck, Joelle Taylor, Jay Bernard, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, lisa luxx, Shareefa Energy, Alycia Pirmohamed, Rebecca Tamás, Nuar Alsadir, Sanah Ahsan, Maryam Hessavi, Azad Ashim Sharma, Sandeep Parmar, AK Blakemore, Juana Adcock , So Mayer, Inua Ellams, Eve Esfandiari-Denney and Adam Kammerling.
This event is organised by Out-Spoken Press, with the support and solidarity of our independent publisher friends at Makina Books, The 87 Press, Hajar Press, Broken Sleep Books, Haymarket Books, Saqi Books, Pamenar Press, Prototype and Bloodaxe Books.
My second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize - nonfiction category. For this event, BPL Book Prize finalists in the fiction & nonfiction categories will read from & discuss their work at the library in two panels. Reception to follow.
The full shortlist & more info about the prizes here.
Blue Hill, Maine.
Generative workshop, “Happy Poems!” 10:00-12:00am EST. Preregistration required.
3:00-5:00pm EST - Reading with Meg Weston, co-founder of both Poets Corner and the Camden Poetry Festival; Meghan Sterling, Program Director at MWPA and winner of the Paul Nemser Book Prize, & Finally, Maine’s fifth Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum, who will read the work of the late Paul Nemser of Harborside, poet of “a thousand brilliances’ (Red Mountain Press), who died earlier this year. Free & open to the public.
Brief reading + Q&A with students on Zoom.
6:00pm CT / 7:00pm ET on Zoom
Q&A with writer Chen Chen about his hybrid texts, humor, and writing process
Hosted by Dr. Pirooz Kalayeh, Assistant Director of the School of Media Arts and Assistant Professor of Scriptwriting and Film Production