Event Title: A Reading & Conversation with Mira Jacob & Monique Truong, Sponsored by Kundiman
Description: Join Kundiman for an evening with Monique Truong and Mira Jacob, two masterful multigenre authors of lyrical and vital work. Each author will give a reading, followed by a moderated discussion about their work and its engagement with family, food, identity, and history. Kundiman's Kyle Lucia Wu will moderate. Kundiman is a national nonprofit dedicated to nurturing generations of Asian American literature.
Participants: Mira Jacob, Monique Truong, Kyle Lucia Wu
Location: Lila Cockrell Theatre, Henry B. González Center, Street Level
Date & Time: Friday, March 6, 8:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m.


Q: What book or books that you’ve read over the last year would you most highly recommend?
In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow: a debut novel that introduces us to an unforgettable small town in North Carolina and a cast of characters who are remarkably fully formed, each one charming and flawed and carrying within them the weight of history.

The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin: also a debut novel. A Taiwanese immigrant family in Alaska. What could go wrong for them? Everything. Devastating and gripping.

The Octopus Museum: Poems by Brenda Shaughnessy: intellectually sparkling, laugh-out-loud, followed by tears-for-our-doomed-race poetry.


Monique Truong is the Vietnamese American author of The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. Recipient of a Robert W. Bingham Fellowship, Hodder Fellowship, U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship, and Guggenheim Fellowship, she is a former refugee, novelist, essayist, lyricist/librettist, avid eater, and retired intellectual property attorney (more or less in this order). She serves as vice president of the Authors Guild and is a member of the Creative Advisory Council for Hedgebrook and Advisory Committee of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).