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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Giant Robot presents: MEET THE AUTHORS 7pm Friday Oct 21st at Giant Robot 2 Gallery (GR2) 2062 Sawtelle Blvd LA, CA 90025. (424) 2GO-ROBO Parking is difficult, so please prepare. Ed Lin with special guests: Naomi Hirahara, and traci kato-kiriyama....
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Giant Robot 2 2062 Sawtelle Blvd LA, CA 90025 310.445.9276 Friday, August 15 at 7:00pm – 9:00pm Giant Robot is stoked to host a night of readings from the best writers in America. The last time Ed Lin and traci kato-kiriyama read, it was a standing-room only crowd and every book for sale was snapped up. Now, joined with Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut, it’s sure to be another memorable night. Neelanjana Banerjee, managing editor of Kaya Press, will MC the event, which Kaya is co-sponsoring. traci kato-kiriyama is a nationally-touring writer/actor/multi-platform artist/educator/organizer. She is half of the award-winning PULLproject ensemble, whose show, PULL: Tales of Obsession, has toured from Los Angeles to Toronto and recently appeared in East West Player’s 2-person site-specific show, Our American Voice. She is the organizer of the Generations Of War oral history & peace education project and Director/Co-Founder of Tuesday Night Project – which opened it’s 16th season of “Tuesday Night Cafe,” acknowledged in LA Weekly’s Best of L.A. 2013 list as “Best Free Downtown Performance Series.” traci has facilitated writing, performance and arts activism workshops & collaborations for over the last 15 years – including projects such as the Los Angeles Day Of Remembrance performance she directed which brought together Japanese American and American Muslim storytellers; and courses such as “Wellness & Expression in the Asian American Community” for the Claremont Colleges. traci’s written work has been published and presented through a wide variety of platforms (incl. Regent Press; The Undeniables; Rafu Shimpo; Angry Asian Man; Ford Amphitheatre’s Inside The Ford), and she looks forward to finding more time to finish her second book of poetry & writing, slated for publication in early 2015 by Writ Large Press. Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut is a poet, scholar and teacher who teaches creative writing and college composition in Los Angeles. As a Korean adoptee, her creative and scholarly work reflects an ongoing interest to explore the emotional and historical aspects of the Korean diaspora as well as transnational adoption. Previously, she has collaborated on avant garde music and art projects with composers and visual artists. She earned an MFA in poetry (2002) and a PhD in literature and creative writing (2012) from the University of Southern California. Her first book of poetry, Magnetic Refrain, was published in February 2013 by Kaya Press. She is currently completing a second book titled Until Qualified For Pearl, containing lyrical and narrative poems, and a non-fiction critical book about adoption narratives in literature and film. [From Poetry Foundation] Ed Lin, a native New Yorker of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards and is an all-around standup kinda guy. Waylaid and This Is a Bust were both published by Kaya Press in 2002 and 2007, respectively, and were widely praised. Both books also won Members’ Choice Awards in the Asian American Literary Awards. His third book, Snakes Can’t Run, was published by Minotaur Books in April 2010; it was loved by many and also...
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And I’m not talking about the beer, though it may help! (Art by Chitra Ganesh) This is one of these short books that you finish in a few hours and it resonates with you for weeks, maybe years and possibly for the rest of your life. Corona reads like a fascinating collection of journals and fiction mashed together in a backpack and bound as is. It’s quite fitting that author Bushra Rehman was a vagabond poet. Bushra and I met not even a year after after 9/11 and it’s a complete coincidence that I’m posting this on an anniversary of 9/11. 9/11 actually figures into the fabric of Corona, as narrator Razia Mirza, a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, travels through the country and through time, through troubled relationships and relationships with trouble. Smoking pot with asshole soon-to-be-ex-boyfriends. Drinking beer with racists in the burbs. It’s funny, it’s sad and, if you hang on long enough like Razia manages to, it’s funny again. The book is a brilliant rendering of life and if it is not always life-affirming, it is always genuine and honest. Are you in New York this Friday Sept. 13? I strongly suggest you come to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and see Bushra in all her glory. She is a fantastic reader and always a joy to behold. Below is Bushra’s official bio. Below that is a little romp of a Q&A with her. Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona (Sibling Rivalry Press) is a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States and was noted among this year’s Best Debut Fiction by Poets & Writers. Rehman’s first book, which she co-edited with Daisy Hernandez, Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism was included in Ms. Magazine’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. Her writing has been featured in numerous anthologies and on BBC Radio 4, WNYC, and KPFA and in Poets & Writers, The New York Times, India Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Sepia Mutiny, Color Lines, The Feminist Wire, and Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America. 1) When we met you were a poet. Did you shift to narrative storytelling or have you been collecting these stories all along? Yes, I remember those crazy tours we did with the Asian American Literary Caravan, hitting unsuspecting Asian-American students all over the country with our insidious literature! My poems were all so heavy and disturbing back then that I started to tell funny stories in the middle about my own personal misadventures to lighten the mood. That way the audience could join me on the emotional rollercoaster of my mind. The book is composed of some of those funny stories, mixed in with some heavy dark moments. Onwards with the Asian American Literary Caravan! 2) There are so many crazy, dangerous and awful things that happen in Corona, and yet the reader comes away from it in the same way that the narrator Razia does — with a measure of humor. I feel that people who’ve lived tough lives are...
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And I’m not talking about the beer, though it may help! (Art by Chitra Ganesh) This is one of these short books that you finish in a few hours and it resonates with you for weeks, maybe years and possibly for the rest of your life. Corona reads like a fascinating collection of journals and fiction mashed together in a backpack and bound as is. It’s quite fitting that author Bushra Rehman was a vagabond poet. Bushra and I met not even a year after after 9/11 and it’s a complete coincidence that I’m posting this on an anniversary of 9/11. 9/11 actually figures into the fabric of Corona, as narrator Razia Mirza, a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, travels through the country and through time, through troubled relationships and relationships with trouble. Smoking pot with asshole soon-to-be-ex-boyfriends. Drinking beer with racists in the burbs. It’s funny, it’s sad and, if you hang on long enough like Razia manages to, it’s funny again. The book is a brilliant rendering of life and if it is not always life-affirming, it is always genuine and honest. Are you in New York this Friday Sept. 13? I strongly suggest you come to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and see Bushra in all her glory. She is a fantastic reader and always a joy to behold. Below is Bushra’s official bio. Below that is a little romp of a Q&A with her. Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona (Sibling Rivalry Press) is a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States and was noted among this year’s Best Debut Fiction by Poets & Writers. Rehman’s first book, which she co-edited with Daisy Hernandez, Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism was included in Ms. Magazine’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. Her writing has been featured in numerous anthologies and on BBC Radio 4, WNYC, and KPFA and in Poets & Writers, The New York Times, India Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Sepia Mutiny, Color Lines, The Feminist Wire, and Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America. 1) When we met you were a poet. Did you shift to narrative storytelling or have you been collecting these stories all along? Yes, I remember those crazy tours we did with the Asian American Literary Caravan, hitting unsuspecting Asian-American students all over the country with our insidious literature! My poems were all so heavy and disturbing back then that I started to tell funny stories in the middle about my own personal misadventures to lighten the mood. That way the audience could join me on the emotional rollercoaster of my mind. The book is composed of some of those funny stories, mixed in with some heavy dark moments. Onwards with the Asian American Literary Caravan! 2) There are so many crazy, dangerous and awful things that happen in Corona, and yet the reader comes away from it in the same way that the narrator Razia does — with a measure of humor. I feel that people who’ve lived tough lives are...
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