Christine Evangelou loves to look past wat is visible and tries to find hidden meanings. After an unsuccessful business venture, she decided that she would write about her experiences. In this poem, she writes about persevering and looking past the bad times and always keep a good attitudes in new beginnings.
Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky was forced to move out of his native country. He later altered his name to fit the western interpretation to Joseph Brodsky. Joseph was born in the middle of WWII to Jewish parents in the Soviet Union. His keen intellect, ironic wit, fiery spirit and thirst for knowledge didn’t align with the ideologies and politics of Soviet Russia and for these reasons he was practically exiled from his home land. Persecuted for his pursuit of artistic and individual voice he was tried and even sent to a labour camp by the government. Described in his own words “They have simply kicked me out of my country, using the Jewish issue as an excuse.” Having moved to Michigan in 1972 Brodsky subsequently taught, pursued his career in writing and was even a recipient of a Nobel Prise for his work.
Isabel and her Colores Go to School is a heartwarming story about Isabel's first day of school as a child who doesn't speak much English. She speaks Spanish at home, and she finds herself feeling more and more anxious about what it will be like in a classroom with new friends. When her first day isn't going quite as smoothly has she had hoped, she finds something that gives her some peace - having something in common with another child in the class. She begins to see that while new beginnings can be very scary (at any age!), she can trust in herself and be brave.
Alexandra Alessandri is a Colombian American who grew up in Florida, taking summer trips to Colombia. As a child, she loved the library, and would fill notebooks with her stories and poems. She earned a BA and MA in English literature, and after her father passed away, she found her way back to writing as she used it to reflect and to mourn. You can learn more about her and her upcoming middle grade fantasy novel (described as "Encanto meets the Chronicles of Narnia") here: https://alexandraalessandri.com/
We Were Dreamers tells the story of Simu Liu's family, all the way from his parents' upbringing in pre and post-Cultural Revolution China to his childhood in Harbin, China before immigrating to Canada. Following a tumultuous and rebellious time as a teenager and a failed accounting career, Simu Liu realized that his calling lay in acting and began his Hollywood journey one role at a time. We Were Dreamers celebrates the dreams we all have for ourselves as well as the dreams immigrants have for their families.
Simu Liu is a Canadian actor and author best known for his roles as Jung Kim in Kim's Convenience and as Shang-Chi in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2015, his work on the drama series Blood and Water also earned him a Canadian Screen Awards and an ACTRA Awards nominations. In 2022, Time Magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. We Were Dreamers became an instant New York Times bestseller upon publication in Spring 2022.
Set in 1999, Satellite Love tells the story of 16-year-old Anna Obata, a lonely, bullied girl who lives in Japan. Between her troubled school days and having to care for her elder, invalid grandfather, Anna's only solace and comfort is looking up at the night sky each night to watch the stars thorugh her telescope. Everything changes when, one day, a Low Earth Orbit satellite (LEO) looks back and decides to descend to earth.
Genki Ferguson was born in New Brunswick, but grew up in both Calgary and Kyushu, Japan. In 2017, he won the 2017 Helen Pitt Award from the University of Victoria. Satellite Love was long-listed for CBC's Canada Reads competition, appeared on Daily Hive's "10 Essential Reads to Celebrate Asian Canadian Writers", and was one of Quill and Quire's best booksellers' Books of the Year.
Lyla Lee's popular Mindy Kim series now includes 8 books, with a 9th coming out this summer. In the series, Mindy Kim is a young Asian American girl, trying to figure out what makes her who she is. In Mindy Kim and the Lunar New Year Parade, Mindy finds celebrating her favourite holiday feels different this year without her mom. Lyla Lee's life as a Korean American influences the character of Mindy, and we follow along on her adventures.
In Friends are Friends Forever, Dandan is about to travel off on a brand new adventure - moving from China to America. She and her best friend, Yueyue, usually celebrate Lunar New Year together, and Dandan is worried that her new home will lack all of the friendships and celebrations of her old one.
This special story is written based on Dane Liu's own experience as an immigrant, exploring new traditions and trying to maintain old ones. Friends are Friends Forever is her debut picture book, and she has some interesting others to keep an eye out for in 2023 - Amazing: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Who
"Christmas,1970" depicts the scene of a family's first Christmas in an unknown place away from home through the lens of a narrator reflecting back on her younger selves naive perspective. The descriptions allude to the unfamiliarity of an American Christmas as well as the assimilation that the family has undergone in the hopes of blending in to a new country.
Sandra Castillo was born in Havana, Cuba, earning both her BA and MA in creative writing from Florida State University. Her first book, My Father Sings to My Embarrassment (2002) was selected by Cornelius Eady for the White Pine Press Poetry Prize with several of her poems having been published in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. Many of her poems have been influenced by the possibility early on in her childhood of immigrating to the US and thus references the streets and lives she left behind in Cuba.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up with me is a graphic novel that follows Frederica "Freddy" Riley throughout her struggles with her on-again, off-again relationship with Laura Dean. It is a LGBTQ+ story written by Mariki Meddaugh. Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian artist and writer, she is known for her graphic novels and she also has several works of fiction and non-fiction works of proses. She started working for both Marvel and DC comics in 2016. You can see her work in; Batman: Detecive Comis, Supergirl Being Super and more.
Tara Meddaugh is a play write who has performed in dozens of theaters around the world. She's been writing since she was a child and focus on comedic scenes. In this monologue, Brian is talking to his casual girlfriend Abby who does not believe that their relationship is going to succeed. Brian decides to convince her that he will learn how to love her and that this is just a hiccup.
It's Christmas time in the jungle, and Jim just can't get into the holiday spirit. Then Jim eats a "festive" green banana that makes him feel sick. Now everything seems worse. While all the other animals in the jungle are ready and eagerly awaiting Christmas, Jim can't stop feeling that this time of year stinks. But with his good friend Norman's help, Jim discovers that focusing on the good things around him instead of his own problems, is a reason to celebrate.
"Winter House" tells the story of a mother recounting and teaching her daughter the French words that her parents taught her. She differentiates the way both her parents speak and how that reflects their individual personalities. The speaker also recognizes that translations lack the connotations and love that have become so apparent to her as she's grown up and regrets to inform her daughter that those broken words are all that she has to offer as a liasion to her grandparents.
Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang is a teacher, children's writer and a poet with her poetry having won the Arc Magazine Reader's Choice for Poem of the Year. Her poetry book Sweet Devilry (2011) won the Gerald Lampert Award as well as Status Update (2013) being nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. Currently, Tsiang is the Creative Director for Poetry in Voice and the Poetry Editor at Arc Poetry Magazine.
Lorna Goodison is an internationally acclaimed poet who served as Jamaica’s poet laureate from 2017 to 2020. In personal stories of her family and in explorations of the past, including the slave trade, she captures her homeland’s people, history and culture. Women’s resilience is a common theme in her 16 award-winning works of poetry, short fiction and non-fiction. In her latest collection. Goodison, while maintaining strong ties with her home country, divides her time between Toronto and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Huy Voun Lee first came to the United States as a Cambodian refugee, at the age of six. Her picture book, "In the Snow," is about a child, Xio Ming, who goes out into the winter snow with his mother. As he has been working on writing and knowing his Chinese characters, they bond over drawing out Chinese characters in the snow. While a simple concept, the book is an interesting reflection on blending aspects of different cultures together. Huy Voun Lee is also known for her origami, artwork, and other children's books that depict the immigrant and refugee experience, such as "Like a Dandelion."
Elizabeth Anne Lochhead was born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire. Her parents had both served in the army during World War II and married in 1944. Her experience at primary school in Lochhead was the inspiration for her poem ‘A Protestant Girlhood’. She moved on to Dalziel High School in Motherwell, and at 15 had decided to go to art school. Despite her teachers encouraging her to study English at university. Elizabeth wrote her first poem, ‘The Visit’, after she entered the Glasgow School of Art in 1965. After graduating in 1970 she would continue to explore her writing talent in worship. In 1971 she won a Radio Scotland poetry competition, in 1972 she read with Norman MacCaig at a poetry festival in Edinburgh, and her first collection, Memo for Spring, was published in 1972. Alongside with her contemporaries: Alasdair Gray, Jim Kelman, Tom Leonard, Tom McGrath and Alan Spence Elizabeth Lochhead san stands out as a rare female presence and this has been enabling and inspiring for the generation that followed.
Hieu Minh Nguyen identifies as a queer, Vietnamese American who practices both performance and poetry. He has two collections of poetry: 2014's This Way to the Sugar and 2018's Not Here. The poem included here, "Chasm", reckons with one of the the many unintended social and interpersonal consequences and complexities of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and its direct effect on the speaker's family.
Ada Limón is the USA’s 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2022-2023. “Ada Limón is a poet who connects,” Congressional Librarian Hayden said. “Her accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.” Ada Limón was born in Sonoma, California, in 1976 and is of Mexican ancestry. She is the author of six poetry collections, including “The Carrying” (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; “Bright Dead Things” (2015), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award; “Sharks in the Rivers” (2010); “Lucky Wreck” (Autumn House, 2006); and “This Big Fake World” (Pearl Editions, 2006). She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
North Korea. December, 1950. Twelve-year-old Sora and her family live under an oppresive communist regime. But war is coming, war between North and South Korea--and war is the perfect time to escape. The plan is simple: Sora and her family will walk hundreds of miles to the South Korean city of Busan from their tiny mountain village. They just need to avoid napalm, frostbite, border guards, and enemy soldiers. But when an incendiary bombing changes everything, Sora and her little brother Young will have to get to Busan on their own. Can a twelve-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother survive three hundred miles of war zone in winter? In Brother's Keeper, Korean-American author Julie Lee recounts an edge-of-your seat survival story, inspired by the experiences of her mother, who fled the Korean War before moving to the United States. Writing prompt: Imagine somone you loved was in danger. Where would you take them for safety? What obstacles would stand in your way? Write a short story about helping your loved one to safety, no matter the cost.
Moina Belle Michael is a school teacher from Georgia who established the Flanders Field memorial Poppy as an universal sumbol of tribute to support veterans and their families during World War I and II. Michael was known as the Poppy Lady, who dedicated her life to servicemen and women, buying and placing flowers in gathering rooms before heading overseas. Barbara Elizabeth Walsh writes books for children. She grew up in Pennsylvania, twenty miles outside of Philadelphia, and right up the road from the Devon Horse Show. Whilst being there, She taught in a Catholoic private school. Shortly after she got married and moved to New Jersey, she decided to teach in the public school system. After she had her three sons, she stopped from teaching and volunteered to write publicity for local organizations instead. Her inspiration was heavily inspired by rediscovering a box of stories and poems she's written a long time ago.
"Camoflauging the Chimera" is a poem that takes place during the Vietnam War from 1955-1975. It depicts the static and reserved nature of war and paints the picture of soldiers attempting to remain undetected in the rainforests of Vietnam and the quiet bonds that are created between soldiers and adjacent animals.The poem also explores the dubious mindsets of the soldiers and their tendency to accuse any disturbing force for trying to "uncover" their location to enemy forces. Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana and received his BA from the University of Colorado Springs, his MA from Colorado State University, and an MFA from the University of California-Irvine. His poetry has been described as weaving "together personal narrative, jazz rhythms, and vernacular language to create complex images of life in peace and in war" (Poetry Foundation). He was the recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award in 2011 and has received several other honors and awards including and not limited to the William Faulkner Prize and the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, Komunyakaa serves as Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University's graduate creative writing program.