Kundiman is a nonprofit organization dedicated to writers and readers of Asian American literature. Among its services are readings, workshops, mentorship programs, writing intensives, as well as a poetry prize and an annual writing retreat, the Kundiman Retreat.
Kundiman was co-founded in 2004 by poets Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi after discussing the need for literary community among Asian Americans while at Gambito's family barbecue. [1] The organization’s name refers to a style of Filipino love song, kundiman, that served as veiled patriotism during colonial times. [2]
In 2009, Kundiman announced a collaboration with Alice James Books for a $2,000 book publication prize for Asian American poets, marking the first book prize ever of its kind. [3]
In 2018, Kundiman Fellow Kyle Lucia Wu hosted a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in partnership with Wikimedia NYC and the Asian American Writers' Workshop to create, revise, and update pages pertaining to Asian American literature. New pages resulting from the event included Alice Sola Kim, Weike Wang, and R. F. Kuang. [4]
In October of 2023, Kundiman posted and subsequently deleted a social media post declaring solidarity with Palestinians, after which it was replaced with a more neutral position. For months afterward, members of the Kundiman network would meet and discuss internally about the aforementioned events. In May of the following year, over a hundred Kundiman Fellows, including Ocean Vuong and Solmaz Sharif, signed and published an open letter to the Kundiman board calling for their resignation due to the organization's conflicted posture and their failure to meet certain demands. [5] Two days later, Kundiman responded, stating that, as an organization, they could not take "specific advocacy positions". [6]
In September of 2024, Kundiman announced that Kazim Ali and David Mura would join the organization's board of trustees. [7] One month later, they announced that Andy Chen, Ching-In Chen, Rana Tahir, Seema Yasmin, and Timothy Yu would join Ali and Mura. [8]
After the Asian American Literature Festival's cancellation in 2023, Kundiman and several other Asian American literary and arts organizations launched a series of in-person, hybrid, and online programming across the United States and beyond taking place near the end of 2024. [9]
Past programming and event partners with Kundiman have been the Cave Canem Foundation, Kearny Street Workshop, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Vermont Studio Center, Kaya Press, Fine Arts Work Center, New York University, and more. [2]
The inaugural Retreat was hosted at the University of Virginia in 2004. [10] Later, in 2010, Kundiman and Fordham University formed a partnership in which the Kundiman Retreat would be hosted on the Rose Hill campus, while Kundiman-sponsored readings and events would happen at the Lincoln Center campus. Additionally, Fordham would provide Kundiman with $60,000 for programming support over the course of three years. [11] [12] In 2015, the retreat was opened up to fiction writers as well as poets. [13]
Altogether, Kundiman Fellows have published 311 books and counting, as well as pieces in literary magazines like The New Yorker , Colorado Review , The Atlantic , Poetry, The New York Times , and more. [2]
Past Kundiman Fellows include: [14]
Past and present Kundiman faculty includes: [15]
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is a nonprofit literary organization that provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers' conferences and centers. It was founded in 1967 by R. V. Cassill and George Garrett.
The Asian American Writers' Workshop is a New York–based nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 1991 to support Asian American writers, literature and community. Cofounders Curtis Chin, Christina Chiu, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Bino A. Realuyo created AAWW because they were searching for New York City community of writers of color who could provide support for new writers.
John R. Keene Jr. is an American writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. His 2022 poetry collection, Punks: New & Selected Poems, received the National Book Award for Poetry.
Alice James Books is an American non-profit poetry press located in New Gloucester, Maine.
Sarah Gambito is an American poet and professor. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Loves You, Delivered, and Matadora. Her first collection, Matadora, was a New England/New York Award winner and won the 2005 Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry.
Cave Canem Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree programs and writing workshops across the United States. It is based in Brooklyn, New York.
The Soul Mountain Retreat is a writer's colony in East Haddam, Connecticut, USA.
Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. He is the recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant that same year.
Janine Joseph is a Filipino-American poet and author.
Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American poet and multi-genre writer.
Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a 2016 collection of poetry by Vietnamese American poet and essayist Ocean Vuong. The book won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2017—which made him the youngest winner of the award at the time at 29 years old, as well as the second-ever debut poet to receive it. The book also won the Whiting Award in 2016.
Joseph O. Legaspi is an American poet. He is the author of two full length poetry collections and two full-length poetry chapbooks.
Diana Khoi Nguyen is an American poet and multimedia artist. Her first book, Ghost Of, was a finalist for The 2018 National Book Award for Poetry. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Her second book, Root Fractures, was released in 2024.
The Asian American Literature Festival is a biannual Washington, D.C.–based literary festival dedicated to sharing and growing Asian American literature. It was first held in 2017.
Aurielle Marie is an American poet and activist. Their debut collection Gumbo Ya Ya received the 2020 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry.
Monica Sok is a Cambodian American poet and professor. In 2015, she published Year Zero, a poetry chapbook selected by Marilyn Chin for the 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, and in 2020, she released the poetry collection A Nail the Evening Hangs On with Copper Canyon Press. Themes of her work include myth-making, Cambodian history, intergenerational trauma, and family history.
Duy Doan is an American poet. In 2017, his manuscript, We Play a Game, was selected by Carl Phillips for the Yale Younger Poets Prize; the book was subsequently published by Yale University Press in March of 2018.
Shelley Wong is an American poet. In 2022, she released her debut poetry collection, As She Appears, after winning the YesYes Books Pamet River Prize in 2019, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, and other publications. Her poetry has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Fire Island Artist Residency, the San Francisco Arts Commission, among others.