Immigrant Writers on Embodying 2 Cultures at Once

Moderated and co-hosted by Kirstin Chen.

How do immigrant writers navigate multiple cultural and geographical perspectives? In this reading and panel discussion, Kirstin Chen, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Andrew Lam, and Juliana Delgado Lopera will share how they encapsulate two—or more—sometimes radically different cultural identities in their work and the complications and opportunities that arise when those identities intermingle on the page.

Copies of the authors’ books will be available for sale and signing. Free refreshments! This event is in the Library Meeting Room on the ground floor of the Noe Valley Library. A free Word Week 2017 eventwww.facebook.com/Word-Week-314929538630095

Biographies:
KIRSTIN CHEN is the author of the novels Bury What We Cannot Take, forthcoming in 2018, and Soy Sauce for Beginners. A former Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, her short stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hobart, Pank, and others. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently lives in San Francisco.

INGRID ROJAS CONTRERAS was born in Bogotá, Colombia. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Guernica, among others. She has a column called Book Spine at KQED. Her debut novel, The Fruit of the Drunken Tree, is forthcoming from Doubleday in 2018.

ANDREW LAM is the author of two books of literary essays, “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora,” “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres,” and a collection of short stories, “Birds of Paradise Lost.” He is also an editor at New America Media and has a column with the Shanghai Daily and is widely published in many newspapers and magazines.

JULIANA DELGADO LOPERA is an award-winning Colombian writer, oral-historian, literary-drag-queen based in San Francisco. The author of ¡Cuéntamelo! an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latin@ immigrants, Juliana is the executive director of RADAR Productions.