2019 Emerging Voices: The Final Reading

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PEN America’s Emerging Voices Fellowship pairs underrepresented writers with professional authors who offer mentorship, advice on craft, and feedback on works in progress building toward publication. This culminating event presents 2019 fellows Judy Choi, Anthony Hoang, Fajer Alexander Khansa, T. K. Lê, and Dare Williams reading together for the last time, with introductions by mentors Steph Cha, James Sie, Venita Blackburn, Vickie Vértiz, and Sesshu Foster.

Free tickets are required and available at the Box Office one hour before the program. One ticket per person; first come, first served. Hammer Museum members receive priority ticketing until 15 minutes before the program.

Judy Choi received her masters in social work from Hunter College in New York. Most recently, she was head case manager for InsideOUT Writers, Los Angeles. She is currently at work on a short story collection based on her Texas childhood. She resides in the Los Angeles area with her eleven-year-old son, her dog, and her cat. Anthony Hoang is a commercial insurance underwriter living in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a degree in Economics and Political Science. He is currently working on a novel telling the story of two generations of a Chinese-Vietnamese family set in 1970s Vietnam and present-day America.

Anthony Hoang is a commercial insurance underwriter living in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a degree in Economics and Political Science. He is currently working on a novel telling the story of two generations of a Chinese-Vietnamese family set in 1970s Vietnam and present-day America.

Fajer Alexander Khansa was born and raised in Lattakia, Syria, and Tokyo, Japan. In 2005, he moved to the United States, where he completed his studies at the University of Southern California. His writing has appeared in Tin House and The Normal School. He is working on a short story collection.

T.K. Lê is from Westminster, California. An alum of the VONA Voices summer writing workshop, she has shared her work on KPCC’s Take Two, as well as on stage for ALOUD and Tuesday Night Project. Her essay “Part of Memory is Forgetting” appears in the W. W. Norton anthology Inheriting the War. Her current collection of poems is inspired by the Lambretta her father threw into the ocean in the hours before he left Vietnam in 1975.

Dare Williams is an HIV-positive poet, artist, and activist native to Southern California. Dare’s poetry has been featured in magazines including Starrfucker. An alum of Home School Claremont, he is currently working on a poetry collection confronting the erasure of queer culture.