A Reading List for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month 2024


For Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, observed annually during the month of May, we asked our member presses and literary magazines to share some of the literature by Asian American and Pacific Islander American writers they recommend reading in celebration.

 

Poetry Collections

 

Cover of The Voice of Sheila Chandra by Kazim Ali, featuring a ripped-up illustration of workers on a farm.The Voice of Sheila Chandra by Kazim Ali

Alice James Books | 2020

According to Sherif Abdelkarim, “In Ali’s variation, culture and theology collapse to find God—often inexplicably lowercased—in profane spaces, far away from the purity of the temple, closer than ever to that farthest mosque within.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Migrant States by Indran Amirthanayagam, featuring the states of New York, Texas, Florida, and Hawaii in red on a white background.The Migrant States by Indran Amirthanayagam

Hanging Loose Press | 2020

According to Ilya Kaminsky, this is a book “where passion and memory meet, a book that calls for open borders of the mind, it is a book that knows that everyone and no one is a foreigner on this planet and that the country of the poets has no customs.”

 

 

 

Cover of Deep Are These Distances Between Us by Susan Atefat-Peckham, featuring a black bird and a white bird facing each other.Deep Are These Distances Between Us by Susan Atefat-Peckham

CavanKerry Press | 2023

Edited by Darius Atefat-Peckham, this collection “troubles preconceptions of nationhood and fixed systems of power by bringing her reader into the home and offering twilit glimpses of boundless familial love and intimacy.”

 

 

 

Tender Machines by J. Mae Barizo featuring a black-and-white photograph of a lit-up city.Tender Machines by J. Mae Barizo

Tupelo Press | 2023

Set against the backdrop of a changing urban landscape, these poems “swing between the domestic and the surreal, charting motherhood, desire and an immigrant family’s haunted inheritance.”

 

 

 

Cover of Feast by Ina Cariño, featuring a brown, pink, and green illustration of a woman looking at us over her shoulder with a flower behind her ear.Feast by Ina Cariño

Alice James Books | 2023

According to Hilary Sun, this collection “reminds us that we can break this cycle of bitterness and transform it into beautiful, imagined futures. To be eaten does not have to be othering; it can be a way of knowing and understanding.”

 

 

 

All Heathens by Marianne Chan

Sarabande Books | 2020

In this debut poetry collection, Chan “navigates her Filipino heritage by grappling with notions of diaspora, circumnavigation, and discovery.”

 

 

 

Cover of recombinant by Ching-In Chen, featuring a meandering black line on an abstract red and white background.recombinant by Ching-In Chen

Kelsey Street Press | 2017

Chen’s recombinant is “a work of material critique, philosophically jarring in its use of syntax, sound, the erasures held in the stillness of its whitespace that again and again mimic a historical registry.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Animal of Existence by Jared Daniel Fagen, featuring a photo of a bush with red flowers set against the background of a canyon landscape and three green moons in different phases.The Animal of Existence by Jared Daniel Fagen

Black Square Editions | 2022

According to Sawako Nakayasu, Fagen’s collection is “a complex animal—crouching, questioning, restless, at times stalking the edges of consciousness, at times wild of mouth, with an electric charged bite.”

 

 

 

Cover of Love Letters to the World by Meia Geddes, featuring an orange flower with one petal falling off.Love Letters to the World by Meia Geddes

Poetose | 2016

According to Jennifer Tseng, Geddes’ lyrical letters “are like paper cranes she has made to save someone. To read them is to touch a bird in flight, to experience a growing proximity to possibility as it flies toward you.”

 

 

 

Cover of Each Crumbling House by Melody S. Gee, featuring a red, orange, and yellow illustration of a street of houses.Each Crumbling House by Melody S. Gee

Perugia Press | 2010

In Each Crumbling House, Gee “asks about inheriting a language that isn’t hers and a culture that died during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, while she tangles with the loss of her mother’s culture, food, history, and home.”

 

 

 

Cover of North of Order by Nicholas Gulig, featuring six black posts sticking out of a body of water and reflecting onto the water beneath them.North of Order by Nicholas Gulig

YesYes Books | 2015

According to Graham Foust, this debut collection is “a book-length poem concerned with the locality of what is lost.”

 

 

 

The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani featuring a red background and a drawing of woman and her baby sketched on the page of a book; rips of orange paper surround the baby’s head while black ink stains the mother.The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani

Perugia Press | 2023

This debut collection, “conceived in loss, examines shifts in identity due to Partition, immigration, illness, and birth.”

 

 

 

Cover of Manatee Lagoon by Jenna Le, featuring a mermaid looking behind circular red, yellow, and blue object.Manatee Lagoon by Jenna Le

Acre Books | 2022

In her third poetry collection, Le “sheds light on the experience of being the daughter of Vietnamese refugees in today’s sometimes tense and hostile America.”

 

 

 

Cover of Rose Is a Verb: Neo-Georgics by Karen An-Hwei Lee, featuring an up-close photo of a red rose.Rose Is a Verb: Neo-Georgics by Karen An-Hwei Lee

Slant Books | 2021

In this collection Lee, “inspired by Virgil, has created her own dense, richly-layered collection of ‘Neo-Georgics,’ constituting an extended exploration of such motifs as happiness, olive groves, vineyards, soil chemistries, the seacoast, and the birth of trees.”

 

 

 

Cover of Cutting Time with a Knife by Michael Leong, featuring an abstract yellow, red, orange, and white illustration.Cutting Time with a Knife by Michael Leong

Black Square Editions | 2012

According to Andrew Joron, Leong “redefines the space-time of the page as a furnace of pure imagination, where the cadaver of modernist poetics is smelted with black humor.”

 

 

 

Cover of How To Become the God of Small Things by Fiona Lu, featuring a photo of a sunlit green lawn on a dark green background. How To Become the God of Small Things by Fiona Lu

Map Literary | 2023

In this debut chapbook, Lu “vividly extracts the storms of familial relationships and weaves them into a work filled with feminine strengths, landscapes of fragility, and humanized gods.”

 

 

 

Cover of Oculus by Sally Wen Mao, featuring a woman taking a photo of herself and a bouquet of white lilies in a mirror.Oculus by Sally Wen Mao

Graywolf Press | 2019

This collection “explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement, but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology.”

 

 

 

Cover of Dialect of Distant Harbors by Dipika Mukherjee, featuring an illustration of a group of people looking at a piece of art on a wall.Dialect of Distant Harbors by Dipika Mukherjee

CavanKerry Press | 2022

These poems are “incantations to our connections to the human family—whether in Asia, or Europe, or the United States—and focus on what is most resilient in ourselves and our communities.”

 

 

 

Ashore by Laurel Nakanishi featuring abstract artwork of a man’s side profile against a tidal wave.Ashore by Laurel Nakanishi

Tupelo Press | 2021

According to Campbell McGrath, Nakanishi’s debut poetry collection is “a document of lyrical witness steeped in the language, history and mythology of her native Hawaii.”

 

 

 

Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil featuring a photograph of an aquamarine and orange fish tail.Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Tupelo Press | 2011

Nezhukumatathil’s third collection “travels along a lush current—a confluence of leaping vocabulary and startling formal variety, with upwelling gratitude at its source: for love, motherhood, ‘new hope,’ and the fluid and rich possibilities of words themselves.”

 

 

 

Cover of Survived By featuring a blue shell.Survived By: An Atlas of Disappearance by Stephanie Niu

Host Publications | 2024

This chapbook “animates extinct, endangered, and recovering species of Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory, through visual poems that chronicle the extinction crisis without relenting to its abstraction.”

 

 

 

From Unincorporated Territory [Åmot] by Craig Santos Perez

Omnidawn | 2023

Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry, this book “explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of åmot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders.”

 

 

 

Habitat Threshold by Craig Santos Perez

Omnidawn | 2020

Perez’s poetry collection “explores his ancestry as a native Pacific Islander, the ecological plight of his homeland, and his fears for the future.”

 

 

 

Cover of Again by Jennifer Perrine, featuring two lizard-like creatures eating each other with a tree in the background whose root is a black arrow.Again by Jennifer Perrine

Airlie Press | 2020

Perrine’s fourth collection “riffs on common words—tremendous, terrific, disaster, wall, ban—that have been overused and misused in recent years, made to carry the weight of disturbing connotations.”

 

 

 

Cover of My Boyfriend Apocalypse by antmen pimentel mendoza, featuring an illustration of a yellow liquid being poured from a pan into a red and white takeout container.My Boyfriend Apocalypse by antmen pimentel mendoza

Nomadic Press & Black Lawrence Press | 2023

According to Sanjana Bijlani, “the speculative tenderness at the heart of antmen pimentel mendoza’s poetry embraces life, not just survival, while the future is still ours to imagine.”

 

 

 

Cover of Gilt by Raena Shirali, featuring a pink and white, up-close photo of a gilted object.Gilt by Raena Shirali

YesYes Books | 2017

This collection “dissects experiences against a white Southern background and begs the question: ‘What does America demand of my brown body?’”

 

 

 

Cover of Happy Poems and Other Lies by Jeddie Sophronius, featuring a black and white bordered illustration of ferns in a forest.Happy Poems and Other Lies by Jeddie Sophronius

Codhill Press | 2024

Sophronius’s fourth book combines “elements of biblical language, surrealism, and absurdism to explore the speaker’s longing for acceptance and their internal conflicts as they navigate their own spirituality.”

 

 

 

Cover of Instrument by Dao Strom, featuring a translucent woman walking away from us across a bridge.Instrument by Dao Strom

Fonograf Editions | 2020

Published alongside a companion album, Strom’s collection “is an experiment in multimodal poetics—inhabiting a synergistic blend of poetry, music, and visual art: the artist’s three forms of ‘voice.’”

 

 

 

Cover of What You Refuse To Remember by MT Vallarta, featuring an illustration of a hand holding up a heart that's on fire with an arrow through it.What You Refuse To Remember by MT Vallarta

Small Harbor Publishing | 2023

According to Angela Peñaredondo, this debut collection “transgresses narratives of second-generation immigrant g[x]rlhood by intimately positioning it against cultural histories of imperialism, gender violence, and femme subjugation.”

 

 

 

Proof of Stake: An Elegy by Charles Valle featuring a black smudged pattern against a light blue background.Proof of Stake: An Elegy by Charles Valle

Fonograf Editions | 2021

This debut collection focuses “on immigration, colonialism, and the death of the speaker’s infant daughter.”

 

 

 

Cover of Yellow Rain by Mai Der Vang, featuring the letters Y and R in black, orange, and pink on a sage green background.Yellow Rain by Mai Der Vang

Graywolf Press | 2021

A finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize, this poetry collection is “a reinvestigation of chemical biological weapons dropped on the Hmong people in the fallout of the Vietnam War.”

 

 

 

Cover of My Name Is Immigrant by Wang Ping, featuring a photograph of a woman looking at the camera, half of her long hair loose and the other half in a braid.My Name Is Immigrant by Wang Ping

Hanging Loose Press | 2021

Wang’s latest poetry collection is a “song for the plight and pride of immigrants around the globe.”

 

 

 

Cover of Tell it Slant by John Yau, featuring an abstract white illustration with two large black triangles.Tell it Slant by John Yau

Omnidawn | 2023

In this collection made up of eight sections, Yau “summons spirits who help the author ‘tell all the truth,’ among whom are reimagined traces of poets, movie stars, and science fiction writers.”

 

 

 

Cover of Slow Render by Jess Yuan, featuring a photo of an easel standing in a dark room with the blinds drawn over the window.Slow Render by Jess Yuan

Airlie Press | 2024

Told in three parts, this book interrogates “how our environments are imagined, constructed, represented, and lived in.”

 

 

 

Plays, Graphic Narratives & Hybrid Works

Cover of Northwood Meadows: Moments by Andy Chang, featuring paintings of a teddy bear, a penguin, a panda, and a dinosaur.Northwood Meadows: Moments by Andy Chang

Read Furiously | 2024

This book uses the three-panel style of the classic comic strip and a crew of woodland creatures to celebrate “the beauty of sequential art and the joy it brings to readers.”

 

 

 

Cover of Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho, featuring an illustration of blood-specked mushrooms on a dark green background.Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho

Feminist Press | 2021

Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, this book is “about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia.”

 

 

 

First by Lianne Cruz featuring artwork of a baby’s hand holding a woman’s finger against a blue background with photos of children together.First by Lianne Cruz

Read Furiously | 2023

In a series of vignettes, Cruz “chronicles her pregnancy and all of its unexpected firsts” and “offers a beautiful celebration of her family’s Filipino heritage and her loving network of family and friends.”

 

 

 

Cover of Suicide Forest by Haruna Lee, featuring an illustration of a tree and a girl hovering upside down in the air.Suicide Forest by Haruna Lee

53rd State Press | 2019

Written to be performed by a Japanese heritage cast, in this bilingual play “a salaryman searches for self-worth, while a lonely teenage girl grapples with her sexuality in a nightmarish, male-defined society.”

 

 

 

Cover of Navigating the Divide by Linda Watanabe McFerrin, featuring a photo of a woman looking off to the side.Navigating the Divide by Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Alan Squire Publishing | 2019

This multi-genre collection “sets out to attempt its namesake, to ‘navigate the divide’—between spiritual and physical, between thought and desire, between individual and collective.”

 

 

 

Cover of 36 Dwellings by Jan M. Padios, featuring blue, white, pink, and brown dots on a gray background.36 Dwellings by Jan M. Padios

Burrow Press | 2024

A “literary-architectural hybrid project,” this book “sketches fault lines within a Filipinx family, linking intimate harm to the forces of colonialism and labor migration.”

 

 

 

Cover of Blue Rice by Frances Park, featuring an illustration of a woman in profile whose body and face are made up of a blue and black mountain landscape with an orange sun.Blue Rice by Frances Park

Vine Leaves Press | 2024

In this story, “an elderly Korean woman relives her years upended by the Korean War, finding love in the rubble, and her acclimation to 1960s America.”

 

 

 

Cover of Dominant Genes by SJ Sindu, featuring a pink snake and a purple snake twining into an infinity symbol on a light blue background.Dominant Genes by SJ Sindu

Black Lawrence Press | 2022

According to Erin Belieu, this collection about family, heritage, and the construction of nonbinary and queer identities “demonstrates the great pleasures and opportunities for surprise there are in hybrid forms.”

 

 

 

Novels & Short Fiction Collections

 

Cover of The City of Good Death by Priyanka Champaneri, featuring two silhouettes rowing boats in a yellow river under a green sky.The City of Good Death by Priyanka Champaneri

Restless Books | 2021

Champaneri’s debut novel “brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go.”

 

 

 

Cover of All Roads Lead to Blood by Bonnie Chau, featuring an abstract illustration made up of brown, red, and orange triangles.All Roads Lead to Blood by Bonnie Chau

Santa Fe Writers Project | 2018

These stories exploring the lives of young women are “bold, highly imaginative, and haunting, featuring unique characters who defiantly exert their individuality.”

 

 

 

Cover of Beauty by Christina Chiu, featuring a diagram of a body with measurements assigned to different body parts.Beauty by Christina Chiu

Santa Fe Writers Project | 2020

According to Helen Benedict, this is “a fast-paced, sexy novel about growing up, making mistakes, and learning from them, written in a defiant, witty prose.”

 

 

 

Cover of Ship of Fates by Caitlin Chung, featuring red lanterns and playing cards on a black background.Ship of Fates by Caitlin Chung

Lanternfish Press | 2020

“This gem of a novel,” writes Lewis Buzbee, “is a dazzling, subversive fairy tale, one that both reveals and upends the myth of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast.”

 

 

 

Cover of Salve by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, featuring a stuffed purple horse and a yellow walkie talkie.Salve by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier

Nomadic Press & Black Lawrence Press | 2016

According to Michelle Tea, this story collection contains “intimate, gutsy, heartbreaking stories—stories about having bodies and having histories, having desire and having had desire.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Parted Earth by Anjali Enjeti, featuring an illustration of white birds flying across the cover on a dark blue background.The Parted Earth by Anjali Enjeti

Hub City Press | 2021

Enjeti’s debut novel “is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Default World by Naomi Kanakia, featuring a person looking down with neon green eyelashes and neon speckles on their face.The Default World by Naomi Kanakia

Feminist Press | 2024

Kanakia’s novel “skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture and asks whether ‘found family’ is just another of the twenty-first century’s broken promises.”

 

 

 

Cover of Maw Appears in the Following Forms by Kiley McLaughlin, featuring an animal's black head on a bright red and orange background.Maw Appears in the Following Forms by Kiley McLaughlin

Gold Line Press | 2024

In linked vignettes, McLaughlin “experiments with speculative storytelling, queer myth-making, and decolonial horror to ask what it means to inhabit a body and lineage fractured by multiple intersecting histories of violence.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Hundred Choices Department Store by Ginger Park, featuring an illustration of a smaller pink building next to a larger purple one.The Hundred Choices Department Store by Ginger Park

Regal House Publishing | 2022

According to Karen Leggett Abouraya, this middle-grade novel set in northern Korea during World War II is “a reminder that losses from conflict have a lasting impact, even on resilient children, and political boundaries often draw red lines through the heart.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Hour of Daydreams by Renee Macalino Rutledge, featuring a white feather falling against a starry night sky.The Hour of Daydreams by Renee Macalino Rutledge

Forest Avenue Press | 2017

This debut novel, according to Daisy Hernández, “is a stirring and haunting exploration of marriage, culture, and gender roles.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Anchored World: Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore by Jasmine Sawers, featuring a black and white illustration of a woman looking out at the reader.The Anchored World: Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore by Jasmine Sawers

Rose Metal Press | 2022

Drawing inspiration from a mixed heritage and from history, this collection “invents a hybrid folklore for liminal characters who live between the lines and within the creases of race and language, culture and gender, sexuality and ability.”

 

 

 

Cover of Voyager 2, This is Voyager 1, Over by Maxwell Suzuki, featuring white orbit routes on the background of a starry night sky.Voyager 2, This is Voyager 1, Over by Maxwell Suzuki

Gold Line Press | 2024

Over the course of three stories, Suzuki “navigates the tensions and freedoms of isolation, retreat, seclusion, and self discovery.”

 

 

 

Cover of A Professional Lola by E. P. Tuazon, featuring an illustration of a woman sitting in front of a mirror and applying lipstick.A Professional Lola by E. P. Tuazon

Red Hen Press | 2024

Winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, this collection blends “literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity.”

 

 

 

Cover of Mongolian Horse by David E. Yee, featuring a black and white illustration of a hand and forearm on top of a geometric background.Mongolian Horse by David E. Yee

Black Lawrence Press | 2022

According to Lee Martin, these “are unforgettable stories of the ways we fail one another despite our best intentions and the spirit it takes to keep believing in redemption.”

 

 

 

Nonfiction Books

 

Cover of Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time by Natalie Hodges, featuring five black vertical lines with black scribbles on top of them.Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time by Natalie Hodges

Bellevue Literary Press | 2022

Concert solo violinist Hodges “traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimagined.”

 

 

 

Cover of Names for Light: A Family History by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint, featuring the title on a black rectangle with a blurry photo in the background.Names for Light: A Family History by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint

Graywolf Press | 2021

In this collection, Myint “explores home, belonging, and identity by revisiting the cities in which her parents and grandparents lived” and “intertwines oral narratives with the official and mythic histories of Myanmar.”

 

 

 

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Milkweed Editions | 2024

Nezhukumatathil’s celebrated work of nonfiction now includes additional essays and illustrations.

 

 

 

Cover of The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki, featuring a woman's face on a light blue background.The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki

Restless Books | 2016

In this lyrical short memoir, Ozeki “challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording her thoughts, and noticing every possible detail.”

 

 

 

Cover of A Fish Growing Lungs by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, featuring a fish cut into four parts on a salmon pink background.A Fish Growing Lungs by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn

Burrow Press | 2020

These linked essays “reflect on Sawchyn’s diagnosis and its unraveling, the process of withdrawal and recovery, and the search for identity as she emerges from a difficult past into a cautiously hopeful present.”

 

 

 

Cover of A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, featuring an illustration of a woman in a blue dress and a red and yellow hat.A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

Warbler Press | 2021

In this memoir, Sugimoto “chronicles her childhood in the frozen Nagaoka region of Japan,” as well as her eventual move to the United States after “she becomes engaged by family arrangement to a Japanese merchant in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

 

 

Anthologies

 

Cover of A Measure of Belonging, featuring an illustration of two hands and forearms in blue and red circling the title.A Measure of Belonging

Hub City Press | 2020

Edited by Cinelle Barnes, the essays in this anthology—by Jennifer Hope Choi, M. Evelina Galang, Aruni Kashyap, and more—“confront the complexities of the South’s relationship with race, uncovering the particular difficulties and profound joys of being a Southerner in the 21st century.”

 

 

 

Cover of Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts, featuring a bright orange piece of paper torn to reveal an old document underneath.Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts

Warbler Press | 2020

Edited by Ulrich Baer and Smaran Dayal, this anthology brings together some of the first published works from Carl Sadakichi Hartmann, Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton), Yone Noguchi, and Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton).

 

 

 

Cover of Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets, featuring a shadowy photo of a nest filled with wilting flower petals.Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets

Kelsey Street Press | 2015

In this anthology edited by Timothy Yu and Emgee Dufresne, four essayists “provide a critical framework on the life, works, politics, and poetics of Asian American poets Nellie Wong, Myung Mi Kim, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Bhanu Kapil.”

 

 

 

Literary Magazines

 

Logo of ANMLY with the text in black inside a twisted mobius shape colored in with multicolored patches, against a pale purple background.“The Umbilical Telephone” by K-Ming Chang

ANMLY | 2023

This piece begins, “In our house we have a big beige telephone, absorbent as a loaf of bread. It turns stale when we’re silent, so we talk as much as possible.”

 

 

 

Logo of manywor(l)ds, featuring blue text on a white background.“Self Portrait as Fraying Seams” by Ava Chen

manywor(l)ds | 2023

This poem begins, “I was born at 11:11 a.m. though / I didn’t believe my mother / for too little time.”

 

 

 

Logo of The Cincinnati Review featuring "The" and "Review" in black and "Cincinnati" in white on a red square.“After After” by Uyen Phuong Dang

The Cincinnati Review | 2023

This story begins, “The Reforms came to Vietnam and all the birds started to vanish.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Kenyon Review Winter 2024 issue, featuring a series of squares in purple, pink, black, and white.“Oxytocin” by Duy Đoàn

The Kenyon Review | 2024

This poem begins, “A good way to change your / name is to get a divorce.”

 

 

 

 

Logo of The Apple Valley Review, with white text saying "The Apple Valley Review: A Journal of Contemporary Literature" on a black background.“The Kanzaki River” by Yuko Iida Frost

Apple Valley Review | 2022

This essay begins, “Our street in Osaka was still unpaved. The dust stirred up when the donkey strolled past, wheeling its three-layered glass case, displaying freshly baked bread….”

 

 

 

Cover image for "Grocery Store Lockdown" by Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga, featuring a photo of a darkened grocery store aisle.“Grocery Store Lockdown” by Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga

The Fabulist | 2021

This poem begins, “What / Is today? / Does it matter?”

 

 

 

Cover image for “She Says Yes” by Maisha H., featuring an illustration with a red card, two flowers, and a sarota.“She Says Yes” by Maisha H.

Another Chicago Magazine | 2023

This story begins, “Faria’s worst doubts were confirmed the moment her grandmother took out the sarota to slice some particularly large suparis.”

 

 

 

Cover image for “Please Be Patient, Student Driver” by Joseph Han, featuring a black and white photo of a vintage car up-close.“Please Be Patient, Student Driver” by Joseph Han

The Sun | 2023

This story begins, “My classmates were all getting their driver’s licenses. Like any of us had anywhere important to go. They drove cars their parents had gifted them, either a hand-me-down or a brand-new lease.”

 

 

 

Logo of manywor(l)ds, featuring blue text on a white background.“The Promise” by Nora Hikari

manywor(l)ds | 2023

This poem begins, “My poems are dysphoric. My poems are weeping about shape. I’m sorry. You wish a poem had hips. / You wish a poem whipped itself natural and narrow…”

 

 

 

Cover of Issue 8 of The Exposition Review, featuring an illustration of three trains on top of a photo of railroad tracks on a sunny day.“Sidewalks” by Sasha Hom

Exposition Review | 2023

This story begins, “I missed my sixth-grade graduation because I had to go with my parents to Seoul to stay in a multistory hotel. The mission was to scoop up a child we had never seen before, sign some papers, and call her ours.”

 

 

 

Cover image of “Dreaming of Potatoes” by Toshiya Kamei, featuring a photo of many potatoes growing long sprouts.“Dreaming of Potatoes” by Toshiya Kamei

The Fabulist | 2023

This story begins, “When the world ended twenty-four years ago we had enjoyed scoops of ice cream after dinner—until our freezer died.”

 

 

 

The Midway Journal logo, featuring white text on a dark turquoise background.“All Bodies Are” by E. J. Koh

Midway Journal | 2015

This poem begins, “Hauled off / harried by raw earth, / holy, / wounded, / disrobed, both / him and her hard-pressed….”

 

 

 

The Hudson Review logo, featuring white text on a dark blue background.“The Hudson River School of Painters” by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim

The Hudson Review | 2023

This poem begins, “is American identity, I was told. / Never saw why, until that morning / at the Met. Catskills, the green-bodied / and lively river, twining….”

 

 

 

Logo of The Cincinnati Review featuring "The" and "Review" in black and "Cincinnati" in white on a red square.“Lunch Break” by Winshen Liu

The Cincinnati Review | 2023

This poem begins, “I roam the aisles at the fancy food store, / through isles of citrus and berries and grapes, / my mouth a desert, desirous of shapes….”

 

 

 

Cover image for "in ache" by Melissa Llanes Brownlee, featuring four rows of heeled boots and shoes.“in ache” by Melissa Llanes Brownlee

SmokeLong Quarterly | 2022

This story begins, “she shuffles in flea market slippers too big for her flat walk-on-lava feet you going grow into dem no worries she veils her tears in a hand-me-down….”

 

 

 

Cover of Issue 8 of The Exposition Review, featuring an illustration of three trains on top of a photo of railroad tracks on a sunny day.“In the Morning, I Hear Singing…” by Lio Min

Exposition Review | 2023

This story begins, “Yoona doesn’t scare easily. But when she spots Marisol sitting under the flickering halo of the block’s lone streetlamp, she gasps.”

 

 

 

Cover image for "Mother Warns Us of Men" by Shareen K. Murayama, featuring a person holding up two strands of their hair on a background of colorful falling leaves.“Mother Warns Us of Men” by Shareen K. Murayama

SmokeLong Quarterly | 2022

This story begins, “Like the sun, Father disappears every day after work, after drinking too much awamori. He hurricanes other spirits with spirits.”

 

 

 

Cover image for "On Healing" by Courtney Ng, featuring a barred window and a grey concrete wall with the words ‘¿Conoces tu oscuridad?’ spray-painted on it.“On Healing” by Courtney Ng

Wellspringwords | 2024

This essay begins, “In the dream, I’m having dinner on a terrace overlooking the garden of my Airbnb, a white building with a clay-tiled roof.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Common Issue 18, featuring a photo of a white cup laying on its side with a brown liquid spilling out of it.“The Idle Talk of Mothers and Daughters” by Danielle Batalion Ola

The Common | 2019

This essay begins, “A statuette of the Virgin Mary stood guard as my mother and I sipped from glasses of wine cooler on our living room floor.”

 

 

 

The ASP Bulletin logo, featuring white text on a dark red background.“Towards Zero” by Mandira Pattnaik

The ASP Bulletin | 2023

This story begins, “Eighty kilometers outside Kolkata International airport, and your busy bee life is a vibrant static reflection on a lavender-rose, wrapped by the rental company’s ribbon.”

 

 

 

The Wellspringwords logo, featuring dark gray text on a lighter gray background.“The Body Otherwise” by Reni Roxas

Wellspringwords | 2024

This essay begins, “On my second night in the hospital, I had a dream. In my dream, I was waiting for an old friend. Instead, I found myself joining someone else, a new acquaintance, on a walk.”

 

 

 

Cover image for “Neem Tree” by Purbasha Roy, featuring someone in a yellow shirt sewing a colorful rug.“Neem Tree” by Purbasha Roy

West Trestle Review | 2023

This poem begins, “My mother often says, the neem tree standing tall / as dignity arouses in her a sense of relief. I think / by this she means the sways of it….”

 

 

 

Cover image for “To the Obāsan at the Breakfast Café” by Lauren Mariko Scherr, featuring tables and chairs in a cafe decorated in warm fall colors.“To the Obāsan at the Breakfast Café” by Lauren Mariko Scherr

Off Assignment | 2023

This essay begins, “I arrived in Kanazawa just in time for the maples to turn scarlet. I walked through the old town, past tatami shops and teahouses, scanning my memory for half-recalled words.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Kenyon Review Fall 2023 issue, featuring a series of irregular square tiles in pinks, browns, oranges, and reds.“Self-Portrait as Brother’s Mouth” by Sreshtha Sen

The Kenyon Review | 2023

This poem begins, “So I am / both me & man / under stubble / swollen / in volume instead of rusted want.”

 

 

 

The Hudson Review logo, featuring white text on a dark blue background.“Allegiance” by Asako Serizawa

The Hudson Review | 2013

This story begins, “He was a man of principle, Masaharu told himself. After all, he’d kept his head, even in the midst of that nonsense war, which had gone much too far—anyone could’ve told anyone that by the dismal end of it.”

 

 

 

Cover image for “In your car, you track the distance of lost homes” by Purvi Shah, featuring a geometric metal structure silhouetted against a cloudy gray sky.“In your car, you track the distance of lost homes” by Purvi Shah

Another Chicago Magazine | 2023

This poem begins, “In rotation between constant work & sped-up sleep, they would race / against loneliness, together in a borrowed car from Chicago to New / York City, land of a million lights & a couple / of old friends.”

 

 

 

Cover image for “To the Train Station Fortuneteller” by Daniel Tam-Claiborne, featuring a train station against a blue sky with white clouds.“To the Train Station Fortuneteller” by Daniel Tam-Claiborne

Off Assignment | 2022

This essay begins, “At first, the railway station looked no different from so many others I’d seen in China: concrete columns, opaque windows, a traffic circle ringed with idling cars.”

 

 

 

Cover image for “Falling Action in Hoboken” by Lucy Tan, featuring a black and white photo of a car driving away down the street.“Falling Action in Hoboken” by Lucy Tan

The Sun | 2024

This story begins, “It’s Ladies’ Night at the Shriveled Gun, but none of the women who used to come around here do anymore. Lauren and I are the only ones sitting at the bar.”

 

 

 

The ASP Bulletin logo, featuring white text on a dark red background.“Mad Libs Sonnet: Portrait of My Father” by Tanya Sangpun Thamkruphat

The ASP Bulletin | 2023

This poem begins, “My father is a ______ (random noun). What else can I say?”

 

 

 

Cover of The Hopkins Review Issue 16.3, featuring a board game hovering in an orange sky with white clouds.“The Irates” by Vauhini Vara

The Hopkins Review | 2023

This story begins, “For a month afterward, our whole house smelled foul. There was no telling what kind of food scraps were gathering mold in the kitchen trash. What kind of unflushable sap festered in the toilet bowl.”

 

 

 

Logo of ANMLY with the text in black inside a twisted mobius shape colored in with multicolored patches, against a pale purple background.“In Response To Being Told Me to Take Up More Space” by Rachael Lin Wheeler

ANMLY | 2023

This poem begins, “i am v suspicious of the sky / as i am of many things / bc i hate feeling / as small as i really am / or think i am….”

 

 

 

Cover image for “Dream Log” by Maw Shein Win, featuring a pink, blue, red, and white abstract painting.“Dream Log” by Maw Shein Win

West Trestle Review | 2023

This poem begins, “We are writing from our dreams. / I am not asleep. / I hold one hand in the other. / We notice the topography of our palms.”

 

 

 

Cover of Slant'd Issue 05: Wonder, featuring illustrations of seven different settings hovering in a blue sky.Issue 05: Wonder

Slant’d | 2021

This issue—featuring Amy Chu, Anna Lee, Emily Villanueva, Geena Chen, and more—“encourages us to dream bigger about what our future could look like when we make room for wonder as an inspiration for action.”

 

 

 

The Midway Journal logo, featuring white text on a dark turquoise background.“Atomic Excitation” by Lucy Zhang

Midway Journal | 2021

This piece begins, “We were copper & boric acid & methanol as gas line antifreeze & eager to die as we were to live.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Hopkins Review Issue 16.3, featuring“Young, Asian, Female, Alone” by Willa Zhang

The Hopkins Review | 2023

This essay begins, “‘Hey!’ you said, your voice flagging me down. ‘I noticed you also have California plates.’ You gestured at my car, then your car.”