Crossing Borders: Hearing other Voices in Poetry 2016 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Spring Conference

I'm honored to announce that I, Kao Kalia Yang, Timothy Yu and Ed Bok Lee have been selected as featured poet-presenters at the Spring Conference 2016 of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets at the end of April.

The theme of this year's conference is "Crossing Borders: Hearing other Voices in Poetry." A big thank you to my fellow poet James P. Roberts for helping to arrange this amazing undertaking. The event begins on April 29th at the Crowne Plaza in Madison, Wisconsin and continues until April 30th. What a wonderful way to close National Poetry Month and head into Asian Pacific American History Month.

A semi-annual event, it typically gathers between eighty to a hundered of the state's most passionate poets gather to engage in workshops, readings, open mics, book fairs and a banquet/awards ceremony. Among the events scheduled this year is an Open Mic Poetry session done in a round-robin style, emceed by F. J. Bergmann. All experience levels are welcome.

Established in 1950, the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) is a non-profit organized around poetry: reading poetry, writing poetry, and advocating poetry. The organization was created exclusively for literary purposes with the hope that Wisconsin could become more poetry aware and appreciative of its poets and poetic heritage.

I'll be reading a selection of new and classic poems of mine from my collections DEMONSTRA, Tanon Sai Jai, and of course, On The Other Side Of The Eye as I mark 10 years of this blog this year, and the 40th anniversary of the Lao diaspora.

Timothy Yu is associate professor of English and Asian American Studies and director of the Asian American Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian Poetry since 1965 (Stanford University Press), which won the Book Award in Literary Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. He is the editor of the collection Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets (Kelsey Street Press), and he also serves as an editor of the journal Contemporary Literature. His latest book is a poetry collection, 100 Chinese Silences.

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of The Late Homecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir from Coffee House Press. Her work has appeared in Paj Ntaub Voice Hmong literary journal and numerous other publications. She wrote the lyric documentary, The Place Where We Were Born. Her new book, titled The Song Poet, will be published in 2016 by Metropolitan Books.

Ed Bok Lee is an American writer. His most recent book, Whorled (Coffee House Press), won the 2012 American Book Award, and the 2012 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. His first book, Real Karaoke People (New Rivers Press), won the 2008 PEN/Open Book Award, and the 2008 Asian American Literary Award (Members’ Choice Award).

You can learn more about the event at www.wfop.org. Members can attend for $50, which includes meals. Non-members can attend for $80. Special rates for first-timers and students are available.