Speakers

Organizing team:

Samuel Caleb Wee

Samuel Caleb Wee is Assistant Professor of English at Nanyang Technological University. His research spans diaspora, digital culture, lyric poetry, race, and book history. He is currently working on two monographs: the first, The Lyric Selfie, argues that the online self has its roots in poetry, while the second project examines how technology mediates diasporic intimacy. His poetry collection, https://everything.is, was published in 2024 by the Hanoi-based AJAR Press. 

Carlina Duan

Carlina Duan is the author of the poetry collections Alien Miss (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) and I Wore My Blackest Hair (Little A, 2017). She is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she teaches in the creative writing program. 

Jasmine An

Jasmine An is working on a scholarly monograph that highlights how contemporary, Southeast Asian diasporic poets critique the legacy of US imperialism in Southeast Asia through the aesthetic practice of incorporating bureaucratic paperwork into their poetry. Her creative work also explores the practitioner’s side of this dynamic through various documentary poetic tactics. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oregon. 

Keynotes:

Divya Victor

Divya Victor is a Tamil American poet, essayist, and Professor of English and Writing at Michigan State University, where she directs the Creative Writing Program. Her books include Curb (Nightboat Books, 2021), winner of the PEN Open Book Award and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Kith (Fence Books/Book*hug Press, 2017); Natural Subjects (Trembling Pillow Press, 2014); Unsub (Insert Blanc Press, 2015); and Things to Do with Your Mouth (Les Figues Press, 2014). Her essay collection Kin is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027 and received a 2025 Creative Capital Award.

Paisley Rekdal

Paisley Rekdal is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah and Director of its American West Center. She is the author of seven poetry collections, including Nightingale (Copper Canyon Press, 2019) and West: A Translation (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), and five books of nonfiction. West won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry. Her eighth poetry collection, Heritance, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in September 2026. She served as Utah’s poet laureate from 2017 to 2022.

Guest Speakers:

Lawrence Ypil

Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is an award-winning poet and essayist whose work explores the intersection of text and image, and the role of material culture in the construction of cultural identity. In 2020, he was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and on the longlist for The Believer Book Awards for The Experiment of the Tropics, the winner of the inaugural Gaudy Boy Book Prize. Lawrence has received MFAs from Washington University in St. Louis and from the Nonfiction Writing Program of the University of Iowa. He has taught at Yale-NUS College and Ateneo de Manila University. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng

Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng is a poet-translator working with Vietnamese, English and other tongues. Her translations include Chronicles of a Village by Nguyễn Thanh Hiện (Yale University Press, 2024) and https://everything.is/ by Samuel Caleb Wee (AJAR Press, 2024). She is the author of the pamphlet Masked Force (Sàn Art, 2022) and a doctoral candidate at Stanford University.

Cathy Linh Che

Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist who teaches poetry at Antioch University’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and works as Executive Director at Kundiman. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), a Finalist for the National Book Award, Split (Alice James Books) and co-author of An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books).  She lives in New York City.

Alvin Pang

Alvin Pang is a poet, writer, editor, photographer and translator whose broad literary practice spans three decades of literary activities in his native Singapore and elsewhere. Featured in the Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English and the Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, his writing has been translated into more than twenty languages, including volumes in Slovene, Swedish, Croatian, Macedonian, Chinese, Malay and French. A 2022 Dublin Literary Award judge and Civitella Ranieri Fellow, he has received Singapore’s Young Artist of the Year Award, the Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture) and the JCCI Education Award. He was a Fellow at the Iowa International Writing Program in 2002, and completed a PhD in Writing in 2020. Among numerous engagements, he is an honorary Adjunct Professor of RMIT University and serves on several editorial advisory boards. In 2017, he curated an international portfolio on the theme of Plurality for Poetry at Sangam. His recent books include Uninterrupted time (2019), Diaphanous (2023), in collaboration with George Szirtes, What Gives Us Our Names: Rosetta Edition (2024), and All That Is Left Of The Sea (2025). Based in Singapore, he continues to make regular appearances in publications and events around the world.

Ann Ang

Dr Ann Ang is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. A published writer of poetry, fiction and literary criticism, Ann is the author of Bang My Car (2012), a Singlish-English collection of short stories and the poetry collection Burning Walls for Paper Spirits (2021). She is also the editor of several anthologies including Poetry Moves (2020) and Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Eco-Writing (2023). Ann is also one of the founding editors of PR&TA.

Participants:

Aishvarya Arora

Aishvarya Arora is a poet, scholar, and PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. They’re the author of Mr. Time (Gold Line Press, forthcoming 2026) and their writing appears in Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications. Find them online at coolslug.com.

Christine Veloso Lao

Christine Veloso Lao is the author of Affidavit of Loss (University of the Philippines

Press 2025) and Musical Chairs: Stories (2017). She is an Assistant Professor of the

Department of English and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Letters,

University of the Philippines Diliman.

Conchitina Cruz

Conchitina Cruz teaches at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Dark Hours, her first book, won the National Book Award for Poetry. With Janelle Adsit and James Ryan, she served as series editor of Bloomsbury Academic’s Research in Creative Writing. Recent fellowships include the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship and Bellagio Center Residency.

Isabella Jingyuan Huang

Isabella Jingyuan Huang is a second-year PhD student in English at the University of California, Berkeley, concurrently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing, where she studies poetry with Cathy Park Hong. Recipient of the 2025 Academy of American Poets Prize, she is interested in mid-to-late 20th century American lyric. 

Jonathan Chan

Jonathan Chan is a writer, editor and translator of poems and essays based in Singapore. His debut poetry collection, going home, was shortlisted for the 2024 Singapore Literature Prize. His second collection is bright sorrow. He serves as Managing Editor of poetry.sg. Read more at jonbcy.wordpress.com.

Karis Ryu

Karis Ryu is a scholar, poet, and fiction writer pursuing a PhD in the Department of Religious Studies (Graduate Certificate in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration) at Yale University. She has been published in academic and creative journals such as American Religion, Vagabond City Literary Journal, and The Account.

Justin Tse

Justin Tse is Associate Professor of Religion and Culture (Education) at Singapore Management University’s College of Integrative Studies. He is the author of Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim (Notre Dame Press, 2024).

Margarita Labrador

Margarita Labrador is a writer and instructor at the University of the Philippines Diliman. She is also a volunteer for Rural Women Advocates, an organization that calls for land rights, food security, and justice for Filipino peasant women. 

Mohan Ambikaipaker

Mohan Ambikaipaker is Associate Professor and Director of the World Cultures and Literatures Program and the CLASS Honors Program at the University of Houston. An anthropologist and poet, he is the author of Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). His poetry appears in Best Asian Poetry 2020-21 (ed. Sudeep Sen, Kitaab, 2021), in journals such as Portside Review and Saaranga, and in Italian translation in Gradiva.

Orada Lelanuja

Orada Lelanuja is a lecturer at the Integrative Center for Humanities Innovation, Faculty of

Humanities, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. She is a member of the Crescent Moon Theatre, a Bangkok-based theatre company, and has worked as a playwright and performer.

Phoebe Wang

Phoebe Wang (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian poet and educator. Her poetry collections include Admission Requirements (McClelland and Stewart, 2017) and Waking Occupations (McClelland and Stewart, 2022). She is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include poetry and poetics, environmental literature, decolonialism and post-migration. 

Quek See Ling

QUEK See Ling is a PhD candidate of the School of Humanities at the Nanyang Technological University. With research interests in translation, art history, and sociolinguistics in Singapore and Malaysia, she has presented her research at prestigious institutions such as the University of Cambridge and Sorbonne Université, published two academic and historical books, nine poetry collections, and a collection of ink wash paintings, and authored journal articles and academic translations. She has also been invited as an International Poet at the 2019 Taipei Poetry Festival.

Rohan Chhetri

Rohan Chhetri earned a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. His latest book is Lost, Hurt, or in Transit Beautiful. A 2021 PEN/Heim Grant recipient, his translation of Avinash Shrestha’s selected poems, The Dust Draws its Face on the Wind, was published in 2024 and he has received the Armory Square Prize 2026 for his translation of Parijat's Flowers of the Siris Tree. He served as the Anisfield-Wolf Distinguished Visiting Writer at Case Western Reserve University for Spring 2026, and will be joining American University of Sharjah as Assistant Professor in the Department of English for Fall 2026.

Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal

Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is an Indian–Singaporean poet. She recently completed a second Master's degree at Nanyang Technological University, deepening her engagement with poetry, memory, and migration. Her third collection, Aerial Roots, won The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books (2024), while Between Sips of Masala Chai is part of Singapore's secondary school curriculum.

Winnie Yanjing Wu

Dr. Winnie Yanjing Wu is a Lecturer at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Her research covers the interdisciplinary fields of Asian diaspora and digital media. Besides academic research, Wu is also a documentary filmmaker and a curator who focuses on Asian diasporic storytelling.

Wong Li Fang

Li Fang graduated with a BA (Hons) in English Language, and is a citizen scholar in art history and linguistics. Working across poetry and short fiction, she has previously published in Mekong Review (under nom-de-plume Liv), performed at Spoke and Bird, and cofounded PLAYSET! Magazine. Learn more in her CV.

Xiangyu Li

Xiangyu Li is a PhD candidate in Chinese Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese poetry, translation, and transnational literary circulation. She is also a poet whose work has been published in mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore, and whose creative and critical interests engage questions of place, cultural memory, and literary exchange across languages.

Đenise Hạnh Huỳnh

Đenise Hạnh Huỳnh is a poet and PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is currently an international visiting scholar at the University of Toronto. Her poetry has appeared with Coffee House Press, Water~Stone Review, Haymarket Books, and Literary Hub, among others.

Hoàng Thu Hằng

Hoàng Thu Hằng currently researches Southeast Asia, diasporic, and affect studies, with a gender and cultural focus. She writes short stories, poetry, and creative essays out of personal needs and world-making curiosity. She has a BA (Honors) in Literature from Fulbright University Vietnam (2025), with History and Social Studies minors.

LG Sebayan

LG Sebayan is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and PhD candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she is a poetry editor at cream city review. She researches American colonial photographs of Filipinas and presented at SOAS, University of London; University of Michigan; and Newberry Library in Chicago.

Marrian Ching

Marrian Pio Roda Ching is a writer, editor, and political strategist whose work examines the intersections of institutional narratives, gender, and governance, particularly within the Bangsamoro and the Philippines. Her practice focuses on the politics of representation, positionality, and the hybrid spaces between bureaucratic and documentary poetics in post-conflict spaces.

Preeti Parikh

Poet and essayist Preeti Parikh is the author of Blue Selvage (Tupelo Press, November 2026). A Kundiman Fellow, recipient of awards from Sustainable Arts Foundation and Ohio Arts Council, she holds an MFA from The Rainier Writing Workshop with a scholarly interest in cross-genre work, indigo dyeing, and textile arts.

Vivian Li

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li is a scholar, writer, and interdisciplinary artist. As a neurodivergent first-generation Chinese immigrant dealing with invisible disabilities, she is interested in intersections between gender, disability, and embodiment. She is a graduating Master's student in English and Gender Studies at The University of Chicago, and holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. The author of Someday I Promise, I'll Love You (845 Press), she recently won the short story category of the Creative Writing Collective (CWC) Sustaining Shared Futures Writing Award and was Longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. Her writing is forthcoming and/or published in The Massachusetts Review, League of Canadian Poets Anthology: In the Storm/Struggle, The New Quarterly, and F&SF, among others. She is also the writer and director of three short films (including an award-winning video poem) that have premiered across North America and internationally. She was an AAUW International Fellow in 2024, and has received support from SSHRC, Ontario Arts Council, and International House (UChicago). She hopes to explore more intersections between her academic and creative work in the future.