Marilyn Chin & Genny Lim

CO-SPONSORED BY PEN WEST

MARILYN CHIN’s new book of poems is A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems. Adrienne Rich said, “Marilyn Chin’s poems excite and incite the imagination through their brilliant cultural interfacings, their theatre of anger, ‘fierce and tender,’ their compassion, and their high mockery of wit.” Born in Hong Kong, currently living in San Diego, she is the author of four previous poetry collections and a novel. Widely anthologized, in Best American Poetry, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, and elsewhere, her honors include five Pushcart Prizes, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and fellowships from the United States Artists Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

GENNY LIM—San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate, born in San Francisco—is the author of the poetry collections Winter Place, Child of War, and Paper Gods and Rebels. She also wrote the plays Paper Angels and Bitter Cane and the children’s book Wings for Lai-Ho, among other works. Winner of the American Book Award in 1981, she founded the theater company Paper Angels Productions, later known as XX Theater, and produced many experimental performance pieces. Recipient of the Bay Guardian Goldie for Local Discovery in 1991, she went on to record and collaborate with musician-composers Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Anthony Brown, the late Max Roach, and Herbie Lewis. Her new poetry book KRA! is a power house political and historical, biographical work invoking figures such as James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Francisco X. Alarcon, Fred Ho, and Alfonso Texidor, and is a salute to Flint, Michigan, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter.