Jun 20th, 2009
Reyna Grande
Saturday, May 9, 2009 (7 pm)
Novelist Reyna Grande will read passages from her fiction and memoir-in-progress. Grande won an American Book Award and El Premio Aztlan Literary Award for her critically acclaimed novel, Across A Hundred Mountains. She will discuss the challenges she has encountered as a Latina, an immigrant and a successful writer.
Reyna Grande has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing and Film and Video from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University. She was born in Mexico and was raised by her grandparents after her parents left her behind while they worked in the U.S. She came to the U.S. at the age of ten as an undocumented immigrant and went on to become the first person in her family to obtain a higher education. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. She is a sought-after speaker at middle/high schools, colleges and universities across the nation. Her second novel, Dancing with Butterflies, will be published in October 2009. She is currently at work on a memoir.
Ms. Grande will autograph, and make available for sale, copies of Across A Hundred Mountains.
The event is free and open to the public. Parking is free in the church lot at 6125 Carlos Avenue; one block north of Hollywood and Gower. To confirm seating, please e-mail angelicarandle@gmail.com.
Viet Nguyen
Friday, April 17, 2009 at 7 pm, Free and Open to the Public
Author and USC professor Viet Nguyen will inaugurate the ‘Arts and Reconciliation’ speaker series at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Hollywood. Nguyen will read excerpts from his award-winning short stories and lead a conversation on race relations with an emphasis on Asian-American issues.
To read Nguyen’s short story, “Someone Else Besides You”, from the winter 2008 edition of Narrative magazine, click here.
Viet Nguyen is associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. Nguyen is currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
Viet Nguyen’s short fiction has been published in Best New American Voices 2007; Manoa; Orchid: A Literary Review; A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection; Narrative Magazine and Gulf Coast, where his story won the 2007 Fiction Prize.
He has held multiple scholarships and residencies, including at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference.
Professor Nguyen’s research interests encompass race and ethnicity; multiculturalism and identity; transnationalism; Asian American literature and culture; Vietnamese diaspora and comparative approaches to the American war in Viet Nam.
He is presently at work on two book projects—a collection of short stories and a comparative study of American and Vietnamese memories and representations of the American war in Viet Nam, focusing on the literary and visual arts.
Viet Nguyen’s public reading and discussion is free. Parking is free in the church lot at 6125 Carlos Avenue (one block north of Hollywood and Gower). For more information, contact the parish office at 323-469-3993.
