Featured Writers Reading
June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm
Moderator: TBA
Natashia Deón is a Los Angeles attorney, writer, and law professor. Her debut novel, GRACE is due out June 2016 with Counterpoint Press. She is the creator of the reading series Dirty Laundry Lit and a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Rattling Wall, The Rumpus, B O D Y, The Feminist Wire, and other places.
Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 34 languages. His new novel, Songs of Willow Frost is available now.
Willy Wilkinson, MPH is an award-winning writer, public health consultant, cultural competency trainer, public speaker, and spoken word performer. He is the author of the Lambda Literary Award Finalist Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency, which illuminates trans experience from a Chinese American and mixed perspective, and transforms the memoir genre into a cultural competency tool. Willy has provided LGBTQ and trans-specific training for hundreds of community health organizations, educational institutions, and businesses. Learn more at www.willywilkinson.com.
Called “fast-paced and unflinching” by The New Yorker, and “a genuine tour-de-force” by The Seattle Times, Sunil Yapa’s debut novel Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist was named an Amazon Spotlight selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover selection, and an Indies Next Pick. Yapa’s father is from Sri Lanka, his mother is from Montana. Sunil has lived around the world, including time living in Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India.
F. Douglas Brown is the author of Zero to Three (University of Georgia Press 2014), recipient of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He also co-authored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (November 2016), a forthcoming chapbook of poetry from Upper Rubber Boot Books as part of URB’s Floodgate Poetry series. Mr. Brown, teaches English at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, and is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow. When he is not teaching, writing or with his two children, Isaiah and Olivia, he is busy DJing in the greater Los Angeles area.