Poets & Writers Theater

In this AAWW conversation moderated by Piyali Bhattacharya, writers with debut essay collections recently published, including Cathy Park Hong, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Sejal Shah, discuss Asian American identity, genre, gender, race, publishing, and the ways that the essay form has allowed writers to tell important stories. 

“It’s a book about being present to the world and accepting the complexity of the world.” In this virtual event hosted by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Larissa Pham speaks about her new book, Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy (Catapult, 2021), and the subjects addressed in her essays, including relationships and the differences of expression through visual art and writing, in a conversation with R. O. Kwon.

“There’s always going to be something to say about the push-pull that New York City exerts on its inhabitants,” says Sari Botton, editor of the revised edition of Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York (Seal Press, 2021), in this Books Are Magic virtual event with author Isaac Fitzgerald and contributors to the anthology Leslie Jamison, Lisa Ko, Emily Raboteau, and Rosie Schaap.

“I’ve found myself constantly using the adverb ‘almost’ and so, I call myself an almost-writer. I reuse it all the time,” says André Aciman in this conversation about his new book of essays, Homo Irrealis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), with author Brian Dillon for the London Review Bookshop. “It’s just my way of approaching and avoiding certainties—because I don’t think there are any certainties in life.”