The Asian American Literary Address Series, first launched in 2017, is a running set of commissioned “addresses” assessing the state and futures of Asian American literature. Developed through a partnership between the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS), and a host of participating publication venues, the series features leading Asian American poets, writers, playwrights, graphic novelists, and literary scholars offering a wide-spanning re-imagination of the place and consequence of Asian American literature.

Editors for the series include scholars Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Rajini Srikanth, and Min Song; poets Rick Barot and Sueyeun Juliette Lee; and APAC Curator Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis.

Karen Tei Yamashita

“KonMarimasu”

(published in 2017 by The Margins)

Rachel Masilamani

“Who Does He Favor?”

(published in 2017 by the Los Angeles Review of Books)

Sarah Gambito + Joseph Legaspi

“A Botanic, A Joyride, A Provocation”

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

“Awarding Our Alienation”

Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

“Deconstructing Madmen: Mapping the Relevance of Asian American Literature”

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Rajini Srikanth

“Restless Energies: Reaching for the Far Horizon”

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Timothy Yu

“Chinese Silence, Asian American Critique”

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Ocean Vuong

“A Letter to My Mother that She Will Never Read”

(published in 2017 by the New Yorker)

Kazim Ali

"The End of Canon"

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Franny Choi

"(B)Aiiieeeee!: The Future is Femme and Queer"

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Min Hyoung Song

“Asian American Literature in the Twenty-First Century”

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Bryan Thao Worra

“‘So are you Chinese or Japanese?’”

(published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Review)

Kazim Ali’s most recent books are Inquisition and Silver Road: Essay, Maps and Calligraphies. Northern Light, a memoir of his childhood growing up in northern Manitoba, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. He divides his time between Ohio and California.

Franny Choi is the author of Soft Science and Floating, Brilliant, Gone, as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine. She is a Kundiman fellow, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective.

Sarah Gambito is the author of the poetry collections Loves You, Delivered, and Matadora. She is Associate Professor of English / Director of Creative Writing at Fordham University and co-founder of Kundiman, a non-profit organization serving writers and readers of Asian American literature.

Sueyeun Juliette Lee is a writer, video artist, and scholar. She edited Corollary Press from 2006-2016 and currently works as the Program Director for Chinook Fund.

Joseph Legaspi is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press. He co-founded Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.

Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, as well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other countries.

Rachel Masilamani is a Pittsburgh-based cartoonist whose work has appeared in such venues as Indiana Review, Graphic Classics, and Aster(ix).

Samina Najmi is professor of English at California State University, Fresno. Her essay “Abdul” won Map Literary’s 2012 nonfiction prize and “Greenford’s Gift” was selected by Roxane Gay for publication in The Rumpus.

Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru (Chamorro) from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is a poet, scholar, editor, publisher, essayist, critic, book reviewer, artist, environmentalist, and political activist.

Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Invocation to Daughters, Gravities of Center, Poeta en San Francisco, Diwata, and To Love as Aswang. She is an adjunct professor at University of San Francisco’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program.

Cathy J. Schlund-Vials is a professor of English and Asian/Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut.

Brandon Shimoda’s recent books are The Desert (poetry and prose, The Song Cave), Dept. of Posthumous Letters (drawings, with text by Dot Devota and Caitie Moore, Argos Books) and The Grave on the Wall (an ancestral memoir, City Lights). He lives in the desert.

Min Hyoung Song is a professor of English at Boston College. He is the author of The Children of 1965: On Writing and Not Writing as an Asian American and Strange Future: Pessimism ad the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, as well as the co-editor of The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature. He is currently writing a book about climate change and children in American literature.

Rajini Srikanth is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the co-editor of The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature.

Bryan Thao Worra is the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. One of the cofounders of the National Lao American Writers Summit, Worra is the author of six books, with work appearing internationally.

Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. She is currently Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Timothy Yu is the author of the poetry collection 100 Chinese Silences, three chapbooks of poetry, and Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965. He is professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ocean Vuong is the author of the novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” grant.

Rick Shiomi has been a playwright, director, and artistic director in the Asian American theater movement since the 1980s. He was a co-founder of Theater Mu and the Artistic Director there for twenty years. He is a co-founder and currently a co-artistic director of Full Circle Theater Company in Minneapolis/St. Paul.