Category Archives: features

ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN & LATIN@ POETRY NIGHT
August 20th
8-10 pm
The Nest
200 2nd St
Oakland, CA
FREE!

—–

Mochi cuernos? Horchata boba? Soy chicken adobo? Tapatio maguro sushi? Teka ceviche?

What happens when we bring together 5 great Asian Pacific American and Latina/o poets in one room?

Find out as we enter the linguistic worlds of:

OSCAR BERMEO
MAI DOAN
KENJI C. LIU
BARBARA JANE REYES
VICKIE VÉRTIZ

Join us in The Nest with artist ADIA MILLETT, whose latest brilliant installation will be our environment.

—–

BIOS

OSCAR BERMEO is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest and Heaven Below. Recent poems appear in BorderSenses, In the Grove and Spindle, among others. Oscar is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own), IWL (Intergenerational Writers Lab) and VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation) poetry fellow. He lives in Oakland with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.

MAI DOAN likes mangoes and sticky things wrapped in banana leaves. Her experiences growing up Vietnamese/Mexican in and out of a Californian suburb known for its white supremacy has deeply influence the intent and content of her writing. She finds voice through her poetry and with it, seeks to break down borders and recreate connection, within and outside of herself. Her work can be found in the Spring 2009 Cipactli: La Raza Arts and Literature Journal as well as the 2009 Intergenerational Writers Workshop online anthology Flick of My Tongue.

KENJI LIU is a 1.5 generation Japanese-born Taiwanese American expatriate of New Jersey suburbia. He holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Arising from his work as an activist, educator and cultural worker, his writing explores the politics of identity, migration, race, gender, memory, history, mourning, joy and everyday small occurrences. Kenji’s poetry chapbook You Left Without Your Shoes is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. His writing has also appeared in Tea Party Magazine, Kartika Review, and the 2009 Intergenerational Writer’s Workshop Anthology called Flick of My Tongue.

ADIA MILLET: Deeply embedded in a series of metaphors and dark visual poetry, Adia Millett’ s changing installations suggest a story of a delicate transition from loss to potential love. Her works examine the beauty of impermanence, the power of the unknown, and the inevitable illusion of innocence. In the artist’s studio, symbolic gestures, objects and sounds convey an abstracted reality where the viewer is asked to fill in the blanks. Millett will be working on a short film project and a series of installations over the course of her two-month residency.

Adia Millett has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions at venues. She earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, 2000; and a BFA from the University of California, Berkeley, 1997.

BARBARA JANE REYES was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Reyes is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications. She is adjunct professor in Philippine Studies at USF, and she lives with her husband, the poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA.

VICKIE VÉRTIZ is a writer, born and raised in Los Angeles, whose work is largely informed by the urban magical. Vickie’s poems can be found in Mujeres de Maiz and in the 2008 Intergenerational Writer’s Workshop Anthology called, “I Saw My Ex at a Party.” She lives in San Francisco.