Aaww Radio: New Asian American Writers & Literature

For Asian American poets, what is the relationship between bearing witness to history and giving voice to marginalized communities? At the 2019 AWP Conference and Bookfair held in Portland in March, AAWW hosted a panel titled Poets vs. Community vs. History, moderated by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello with E.J. Koh, Yanyi, Emily Jungmin Yoon, & Monica Sok. These multidisciplinary writers talk about how their work as poets, editors, translators, and scholars allows them to uncover intimacies among seemingly disparate colonial histories, and contextualize narratives of intergenerational trauma. They draw on their varied practices to explore how the individual pursuits of poets can build empathy and community.   E.J. Koh is the author of A Lesser Love, awarded the Pleiades Editors Prize, and her memoir The Magical Language of Others. Koh has accepted fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, MacDowell Colony, and elsewhere. Yanyi is a poet and critic. The recipient of fellowships from Po