Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Awesome night of readings by the great Ed Lin who makes it a point to always read at GR. The planning begins with jokes galore although he's probably 100% serious under it all, and then the next thing you know...
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Excuse the quality and the ad that shows up from Ustream. (it’s recorded from our live stream of the event). That’s Franny Choi, Traci Akemi Kato Kiriyama, Ed Lin, and Chiwon Choi in the “Monsters of Reading” photo.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tongue and Groove – Author Readings Friday 5/25 8pm Giant Robot 2 2062 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025 310-445-9276 In celebration of National Asian American/Pacific Islanders Heritage month, Conrad Romo’s Tongue and Groove Series will make an appearance at Giant Robot 2 featuring Frannie Choi, Chiwan Choi, Ed Lin, Traci Kato Kiriyama and others bios Chiwan Choi is a writer, editor, teacher, and publisher Abductions is his second book of poetry. Ed Lin is the author of Waylaid,This Is a Bust and Snakes Can’t Run. Lin, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. The native New Yorker’s latest book is One Red Bastard, by Minotaur. He’ll be available to sign copies. Traci Akemi Kato-Kiriyama is the creator/ producer of Tuesday Night Café in Japan Town. She is a writer, performing artist, educator and grassroots organizer. Franny Choi was a finalist at two of the three most prestigious poetry slams in the country: the National Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam. She was awarded Best Female Poet and Most Innovative at the 2011 Wade-Lewis Poetry Slam Invitational, and her team was specially recognized for Pushing the Art Forward at the 2011 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. She was also the top-ranking female poet at the 2011 Southern Fried Poetry Slam and the champion of 2010 Seoul Poetry Slam Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles as well as an online equivalent. Eric Nakamura Giant Robot Owner/Publisher eric@giantrobot.com
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Chiwan Choi lights it up! One of the pleasures in reading out is meeting other writers. April was a great month for me because I got to read with two stand-up guys who are also great writers with incredible new books out on indie nonprofit presses. Chiwan Choi, whom I was introduced to by my close pal Soya Jung, is the author of The Flood, a collection of poems, just published by Tia Chucha Press. He makes me think of a neo-Bukowski and his poems make me feel dirty and unloved. It’s easy to make people feel good. It’s harder to push people over to the crevasses and make them take a good hard look down. “and one day/i told my father i was leaving/and he sat up in his bed and cried/and we wrapped clumsy arms around each other/like two boys in love/but it was too late or too soon/for such things” – from the poem “tides.” Two peas from a damaged pod. Cihan Kaan (right) I met Cihan Kaan at AWP, just completely randomly because he stopped by the Kaya booth and picked up Waylaid. Hey, he had to be cool! Cihan’s collection of shorts, Halal Pork and Other Stories, was just published by UpSet Press. You want street cred? Homeboy has been getting death threats for the title alone. And just to turn a metaphor around, his writing is killer. “Brooklyn, New York, September 11th, 1981, I was four. My father had to break into his own apartment, where my mom and her new boyfriend were just beginning to throw a live lobster into a boiling cauldron. Up until that point, my short life had been filled with episodes of my parents battling each other on a near daily basis. When Dad finally left, Mom didn’t waste time finding the next guy.” – from “Isa, American Turk” Check out The Flood and Halal Pork and Other Stories. If you meet me and tell me you’ve read them, I will think you’re really cool.
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