Aug 31, 2024: Reunion Reading at YBCA

Aug 31, 2024 | Sat | 1:00 - 3:00 PM
at YBCA
701 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103

*** Free Admission, Open to Public ***
[ Click to RSVP ]

Come join this multi-genre reading featuring HOME MADE’s facilitators, readers, and workshop participants. Hosted by Creative Corps Initiative Fellow Edward Gunawan, the reading will take place during the “Art, Action, Change” Group Exhibition at YBCA.

Exploring themes of displacement and (be)longing; individual healing and communal well-being; connection and community-building, this multi-genre literary reading invites all of us to contemplate: how do we make a home for ourselves and for one another in this often and increasingly inhospitable world we live in?

Featured readers: 

• Michelle Lin is a visual artist, cultural worker, and author of the poetry collection A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). Their writing and art practice are rituals of grief and healing from the violence of patriarchy, capitalism, assimilation, and living within the imperial core. Passionate about building liberatory spaces for diasporic and queer artists, they work as the Artist Growth Program Director at ARTogether and serve on the Advisory Councils for Vital Arts and Artists’ Adaptability Circles.

• Neha Bagchi writes fiction and poetry. She translates poetry from Bengali and Hindi/Urdu into English, studies translation theory, and is working on a critical analysis of Tagore’s “Gitanjali” in translation. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

• May-Li Khoe (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and writer, born in the Netherlands to Chinese-Indonesian immigrant parents and raised in Vancouver, Canada. Her work leaps through generations and geographies, examines the profound hidden in the mundane, pokes at the imperialism in our spice cabinets, and unearths humor in the tragic fallibility of human belief systems. She’s been published in The Ana, Transfer Magazine, Umber Magazine, 14 Hills, and the inaugural HTML Review; and recommended by The New Yorker Recommends newsletter. She’s currently earning an MFA at San Francisco State University. 

• Nicola Andrews is an Indigenous Māori writer and librarian, currently living on Ramaytush Ohlone territory. They have been supported by writing communities including VONA and Tin House; and won the AAALS Indigenous Writers Prize for Poetry in 2023. This year they published two chapbooks - Māori Maid Difficult with Tram Editions, and Hinting at Decolonization with Kith Books.

• London Pinkney is a writer and editor. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Ana. In 2021, she was awarded the Debra Plousha Moore Scholarship due to her service to the literary advancement of Black Americans, women, and their intersecting communities. In 2023, she was a Show US Your Spines resident with RADAR Productions and San Francisco Public Library’s Hormel Center. Her work can be read in numerous places, including Mirage #5 / Period[ical], OmniVerse, and the anthology Nonwhite and Woman (Woodhall Press). She is currently working on her debut book—an essay collection about Black Californians.

• Giovanna Lomanto (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and dog costume contest judge (ask her about it), who has published 3 poetry collections, 2 chapbooks, and an art books with various small presses. A recent MFA graduate from NYU, she currently serves as the co-publisher of the mid-sized indie press Game Over Books and the lead curator of LitQuake’s QTBIPOC event series. Her work can be found in the SFMOMA, KQED, and the bookshelves of her friend’s homes.

• Nishath Azad (she/her) is a Bengali, Muslim creative driven by a deep respect for honest storytelling, unbounded drama, and raw comedy. Her art explores the South Asian and Muslim queer diaspora experience of navigating identities that their parents do not comprehend, while seeking further connection to their ancestors and roots. After years of advocacy work in her home - Queens, NY, Nishath moved to Oakland. Since art is one of the most universal methods of communication, she is ecstatic to explore the zine-making world and how we can stay connected through these beautiful little booklets.

• Suzanne Tay-Kelley is a nurse-writer in the Bay Area. Raised in Singapore, her artistic themes include immigration and dementia. She holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco, and is grateful for support/fellowships from USF, the San Francisco Writers Grotto, the Novalia Collective, and ARTogether. Her poetry appears in Four Leaf Collective and Quiet Lightning, and is anthologized in: Still You, Poems of Illness & Healing, Wolf Ridge Press; The Healing Art of Writing, and Tell Me Again, University of California Medical Humanities Press. She is thrilled to become part of another creative community in exploring the vibrant local zine scene.

Join our other gathering during the month-long exhibition:

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Check out our other gatherings: