Organizer: Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Type/Location: Virtual
Description:
Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for readings and a conversation between Luisa Igloria, Michelle Peñaloza, and Rhoni Blankenhorn, moderated by R. A. Villanueva. They will be celebrating their books released within the past year: Luisa’s Caulbearer, Michelle’s All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems, and Rhoni’s Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet.
About the Speakers:
Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press; 2024), Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner, 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020),The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2018), 12 other books, and 4 chapbooks. She was the inaugural recipient of the 2015 Resurgence Poetry Prize, UK—the world’s first major award for ecopoetry (now known as the Ginkgo Prize), selected by a panel headed by former UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. She is lead editor of the new ecopoetry anthology The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (Paloma Press, 2025), with Aileen Cassinetto and David Hassler; and lead editor, along with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, September 2023). Luisa is a Louis I. Jaffe Professor of English and Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Old Dominion University; she also leads workshops for and is a member of the board of The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk. During her appointed term as 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita, the Academy of American Poets awarded her one of twenty-three Poet Laureate Fellowships in 2021, to support a program of public poetry projects.
Michelle Peñaloza is the author of All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award (Persea Books, 2025). She is also the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and the chapbook landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015). Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in Covelo, CA.
Rhoni Blankenhorn is a Filipina American writer. Her poems have appeared in The Slowdown, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from Breadloaf, Saltonstall, and Sewanee. Rhoni’s debut, Rooms for Dead and the Not Yet, won the Trio Award, and was published by Trio House Press July, 2025.
R. A. Villanueva is the author of two collections of poetry: A Holy Dread, winner of the Alice James Award (forthcoming in 2026) and Reliquaria (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and Kundiman. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Registration:
To attend the event virtually, please register here.