In-Person: Poetry Reading with Diana Khoi Nguyen and Cindy Juyoung Ok

Please join us for a poetry reading celebrating ROOT FRACTURES by Diana Khoi Nguyen and WARD TOWARD by Cindy Juyoung Ok. The poets will be joined by CM Burroughs.

Please note: Pre-registration for this event is required. By pre-registering, you are verifying that you are fully vaccinated and will wear a mask throughout the entirety of the event.

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In Root Fractures, Diana Khoi Nguyen excavates the moments of rupture in a family: a mother who was forced underground after the Fall of Saigon, a father who engineered a new life in California as an immigrant, a brother who cut himself out of every family picture before cutting himself out of their lives entirely. And as new generations of the family come of age, opportunities to begin anew blend with visitations from the past. Through poems of disarming honesty and personal risk, Nguyen examines what takes root after a disaster and how we can make a story out of the broken pieces of our lives.

In the 118th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Cindy Juyoung Ok moves assuredly between spaces—from the psych ward to a prison cell, from divided countries to hospice wards. She plumbs these institutions of constraint, ward to ward, and the role of each reality’s language, word to word, as she uncovers fractured private codes and shares them in argument, song, and prayer.

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Root Fractures (2024). Her video work has recently been exhibited at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow and member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she currently teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. She is a former high school science teacher and current Kenyon Review fellow teaching poetry at Kenyon College. A MacDowell fellow, she also edits and translates poetry.

CM Burroughs is Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of The Vital System (Tupelo Press, 2012) and Master Suffering (Tupelo Press, 2021) which was longlisted for the National Book Award. Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry magazine, Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, Best American Experimental Writing Anthology, and The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.