Seminar Series in Asian American Studies at AAARI

03 May 2010
Seminar Series in Asian American Studies at AAARI
05/03
Asian American/Asian Research Institute, CUNY

Presenter: Ken Chen (Exec Dir., Asian American Writers' Workshop) re "Juvenilia"
Commentator(s): Jennifer Hayashida

Ken Chen is the 2009 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, the oldest annual literary award in the United States. His debut poetry collection Juvenilia, which will come out in April 2010, was selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Gluck. A graduate of Yale Law School, Mr. Chen abandoned a promising career at a Wall Street law firm to become the Executive Director of The Asian American Writers’ Workshop (aww.org), the most prominent literary arts nonprofit in support of Asian American literature. Most recently, he curated PAGE TURNER, a two-day Brooklyn literary festival that featured more than forty writers, including Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Ondaatje, and David Henry Hwang. While an attorney, Mr. Chen successfully represented the asylum claim of a Guinean teenager who had been detained by the Department of Homeland Security. The case was named one of the top ten most significant pro bono cases of 2007 by American Lawyer and profiled by The New York Post, Essence, and The New York Times. His work has been published in Best American Essays 2006 and was recently recognized in Best American Essays 2007. His work is published or forthcoming in The Boston Review of Books, The Yale Anthology of American Poetry, Fence, Jubilat, Film International, C-Theory, Radical Society, and Art Asia Pacific. Mr. Chen started Satellite: The Berkeley Magazine of News + Culture and also helped found Arts & Letters Daily, a cultural website described by The New York Times as “required reading for the global intelligentsia” and called the “best website in the world” by the Guardian. Mr. Chen has been featured in World Journal, the most prominent international Chinese language newspaper, and China Crosstalk TV. His work on Asia and Asian American affairs has been published in The Boston Review of Books, Manoa, The Kyoto Journal and nationally syndicated Asian American PBS show Pacific Time.

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