Giant Robot Presents: An Evening with Performance – Ed Lin, traci kato-kiriyama, Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut

traci kato-kiriyama is a nationally-touring writer/actor/multi-platform artist/educator/organizer. She is half of the award-winning PULLproject ensemble, whose show, PULL: Tales of Obsession, has toured from Los Angeles to Toronto and recently appeared in East West Player’s 2-person site-specific show, Our American Voice. She is the organizer of the Generations Of War oral history & peace education project and Director/Co-Founder of Tuesday Night Project – which opened it’s 16th season of “Tuesday Night Cafe,” acknowledged in LA Weekly’s Best of L.A. 2013 list as “Best Free Downtown Performance Series.” traci has facilitated writing, performance and arts activism workshops & collaborations for over the last 15 years – including projects such as the Los Angeles Day Of Remembrance performance she directed which brought together Japanese American and American Muslim storytellers; and courses such as “Wellness & Expression in the Asian American Community” for the Claremont Colleges. traci’s written work has been published and presented through a wide variety of platforms (incl. Regent Press; The Undeniables; Rafu Shimpo; Angry Asian Man; Ford Amphitheatre’s Inside The Ford), and she looks forward to finding more time to finish her second book of poetry & writing, slated for publication in early 2015 by Writ Large Press.

Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut is a poet, scholar and teacher who teaches creative writing and college composition in Los Angeles. As a Korean adoptee, her creative and scholarly work reflects an ongoing interest to explore the emotional and historical aspects of the Korean diaspora as well as transnational adoption. Previously, she has collaborated on avant garde music and art projects with composers and visual artists. She earned an MFA in poetry (2002) and a PhD in literature and creative writing (2012) from the University of Southern California. Her first book of poetry, Magnetic Refrain, was published in February 2013 by Kaya Press. She is currently completing a second book titled Until Qualified For Pearl, containing lyrical and narrative poems, and a non-fiction critical book about adoption narratives in literature and film. [From Poetry Foundation]

Ed Lin, a native New Yorker of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards and is an all-around standup kinda guy. Waylaid and This Is a Bust were both published by Kaya Press in 2002 and 2007, respectively, and were widely praised. Both books also won Members’ Choice Awards in the Asian American Literary Awards. His third book, Snakes Can’t Run, was published by Minotaur Books in April 2010; it was loved by many and also won an Asian American Literary Award. One Red Bastard was published by Minotaur in April 2012. His latest book, Ghost Month, a Taipei-based mystery, was published by Soho Crime in July 2014.