Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is a poet and nonfiction writer from Cebu, Philippines. Ypil is currently a Lecturer at Yale-NUS. [1]
He earned his first Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) while on a Fulbright fellowship at Washington University in St Louis, and another MFA in Non-Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. [1]
The Highest Hiding Place: Poems won the 2011 Madrigal-Gonzalez First Book Award and was a finalist for the Gintong Aklat Awards in 2010. [2]
Ypil's second book, The Experiment of the Tropics was the co-winner of the 1st Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize (with Jenifer Sang Eun Park's Autobiography of A Horse: A Poem). It was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in Gay Poetry [3] and on the Editor's Long List for The Believer Book Awards in 2019. [4] The book examines archival photographs of Ypil's hometown, Cebu, during the American Period. Ypil describes the process of writing this book as revealing both historical place and himself: "By looking at the photographs, I ended up looking through them, and eventually discovered myself. It felt like looking at beautiful, deep, dark mirrors." [5]
A review in Singapore Unbound says: "The Experiment of the Tropics is a meditation on the nature of cities, the revelatory power of photography, and the startling capacity of poetry to cut into the violent but redemptive parts of history." [6]
Cyril Wong is a poet, fiction author and literary critic.
Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.
Emanuel Xavier, is an American poet, spoken word artist, author, editor, and LGBTQ activist born and raised in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. Associated with the East Village, Manhattan arts scene in New York City, he emerged from the ball culture scene and the Nuyorican movement to become a successful poet, writer and advocate for gay youth programs and Latino gay literature.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a U.S. /Canadian poet, writer, educator and social activist. Their writing and performance art focuses on documenting the stories of queer and trans people of color, abuse survivors, mixed-race people and diasporic South Asians and Sri Lankans. A central concern of their work is the interconnection of systems of colonialism, abuse and violence. They are also a writer and organizer within the disability justice movement.
Gémino Henson Abad is an educator, writer, and literary critic from Cebu, Philippines. He is a National Artist for Literature of the Philippines.
Richard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. He is the author of the collection Crush, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2004. His second book of poems, War of the Foxes, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2015.
Simeon Dumdum Jr. is a former Regional Trial Court Judge in Cebu City, Philippines, and is a published poet. He once studied for the priesthood in Galway, Ireland, but left the seminary to take up law. After years of practicing law, he was appointed Regional Trial Court judge. He won prizes for his poetry, which he has published and read in the Philippines and abroad.
Randall Mann is an American poet.
Honor Moore is an American writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and plays. She currently teaches at The New School in the MFA program for creative nonfiction, where she is a part-time associate teaching professor.
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Eduardo C. Corral is an American poet and MFA Assistant Professor in the Department of English at NC State University. His first collection, Slow Lightning, published by Yale University Press, was the winner of the 2011 Yale Younger Series Poets award, making him the first Latino recipient of this prize. His 2020 work, guillotine, was awarded the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry and was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.
Joy Ladin is an American poet and the former David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University. She was the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution.
Danez Smith is a Poet, writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are queer, non-binary and HIV-positive. They are the author of the poetry collections [insert] Boy and Don't Call Us Dead: Poems, both of which have received multiple awards. Their most recent poetry collection Homie was published on January 21, 2020.
Rick Barot is an American poet and educator.
The Great Believers is a historical fiction novel by Rebecca Makkai, published June 4, 2018 by Penguin Books.
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Gaudy Boy is the publishing arm of Singapore Unbound. Based in New York City, the independent press publishes work by authors of Asian heritage. The press is named after a phrase in Arthur Yap's poem, "gaudy turnout," "a gaudy boy afflicted with joy." Jee Leong Koh is the publisher and Editor-In-Chief.
Jenifer Sang Eun Park is a Korean American author. Originally from Denver, CO, she currently lives in Tuscaloosa, AL where she is an instructor at the University of Alabama. She earned her MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama and her BAs in Communication Studies and English at the University of Colorado at Denver.
Jee Leong Koh is a poet, publisher, and the founder/organizer of Singapore Unbound. He is Editor-In-Chief of Gaudy Boy, a press associated with Singapore Unbound and poetry editor of The Evergreen Review. He was raised in Singapore and currently lives in New York.
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