First Sunday Prose Reading and Open Mic

Come early to sign up for Open Mic!

A native of Radford, Virginia, Lisa Kwong identifies as an AppalAsian, an

Asian from Appalachia. She is the author of Becoming AppalAsian, a poetry

chapbook forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press, and “Searching for Wonton

Soup,” winner of Sundress Publications’ 2019 Poetry Broadside Contest.

Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, A Literary Field Guide to

Southern Appalachia, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Anthology of

Appalachian Writers, root & branch, the minnesota review, Still: The

Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts

and Culture, and other publications. She also occasionally writes prose

poems and creative nonfiction. She currently teaches Asian American

Studies at Indiana University and English at Ivy Tech Community College

in Bloomington, Indiana.

Lisa Kwong’s photo by Kim Gantt.

Susan Lepselter is Associate Professor of American Studies, and Adjunct

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Folklore, at Indiana University.

Her book The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity and

UFOs in the American Uncanny, (University of Michigan Press, 2016) won

the Society for Cultural Anthropology Bateson Prize of 2017. In recent

years, she has returned to an earlier practice of creative writing. Her poetry

has appeared in Cathexis Northwest.

First Sunday Prose Reading & Open Mic