[KS] Vancouver Lectures & Readings/Screenings by WKL, Oct. 1-8

[Walter K. Lew]

To those of you in the Vancouver area (or who know people there):

I'm giving a series of three lectures at the U. of British Columbia 
on Korean American and Korean literature and film, followed by two 
readings/screenings at the Kootenay School of Writing and Simon 
Fraser University. The readings will be mainly from TREADWINDS: Poems 
and Intermedia Texts (Wesleyan U. Press), which is a finalist for 
this year's PEN Center USA poetry award and co-winner of the annual 
literary award of the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Please come 
up afterwards and say hello. I'll be glad to sign and stamp copies of 
my books w my red-inked seal! / Walter

I. At the U. of British Columbia:

--WEDNESDAY, October 1
Talk on Yi Sang (1910-1937), his relations to both previous Japanese 
literary modernists and subsequent Korean experimental film and 
fiction.
Time: 4 p.m.
Site at UBC: Large seminar room, main floor of the C. K. Choi 
Building (Institute of Asian Research), near Gate Four and the Museum 
of Anthropology, and adjacent to the Asian Centre.

Yi Sang: Korean avant-garde short-story writer, poet, illustrator, 
and architect during the Japanese colonial era. His drawings and 
translations of some of his works appear in MUAE 1 (Kaya Production, 
1995) and Vol. One of POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM: The University of 
Calfornia Press Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, eds. Jerome 
Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (UC Press, 1995), pp. 718-24.

--THURSDAY, October 2
Talk on some of the forgotten literary and political contexts of 
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's DICTEE: Chris Marker's "photo-romans," Tanam 
Press, and "downtown" literary movements in New York.
Time: 4 p.m.
Site at UBC: Room 604 on the main floor of the Asian Centre.

My out-of-print book on Cha's work is currently viewable online at a 
website kindly provided by the poet Juliana Spahr: 
<www2.hawaii.edu/~spahr/dikte/>. Tinfish Press will reprint it next 
year.

--SATURDAY, October 4th
"Between Korea and New York?: The Canadian Years of the First Korean 
American Novelist, Younghill Kang"
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Site at UBC: C. K. Choi Building, "Celebrating 40 Years of 
Canadian-Korean Relations" symposium.

Kang (1899-1972) was a novelist and political activist who served a 
troubling stint in the US Military Government in Korea. He was author 
of THE GRASS ROOF (Scribners', 1933; Follet, 1966) and EAST GOES WEST 
(Scribners', 1937; Follet, 1965), among other works. Many previously 
unpublished photographs of Kang's student days in Halifax appear in 
my "Before THE GRASS ROOF: Younghill Kang's University Days," KOREAN 
CULTURE 19.1 (Spring 1998): 22-29.

II. Readings/Screenings

--TUESDAY (next week), October 7th
Reading of own poetry, video pieces, and translations.
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Site: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Vancouver, in Academic 
Quadrangle 3005 (classroom for English 360).

Newcomers to the labyrinthine SFU campus are advised to stop by the 
information centre at the entrance to the university and get 
directions for parking and classroom locations.

--WEDNESDAY (next week), October 8th
Reading of own poetry, video pieces, and translations.
Admission: $5/$3.
Time: 8 p.m.
Site: Kootenay School of Writing, 204 505 Hamilton at Pender, 
Downtown, Vancouver.
Phone: 604-688-6001.


About the Author:
Walter K. Lew is a poet, literary scholar, translator, and multimedia 
artist whose most recent book, TREADWINDS: Poems and Intermedia Texts 
(Wesleyan University Press) is a finalist for the 2003 PEN Center USA 
poetry award, and a winner of the annual literary award of the Asian 
American Writers' Workshop. He has edited and written essays for 
CRAZY MELON AND CHINESE APPLE: The Poems of Frances Chung (Wesleyan, 
2000), KORI: The Beacon Anthology of Korean American Fiction, 
coedited with Heinz Insu Fenkl (Beacon Press, 2001), MUAE 1 (Kaya, 
1995), and a book on the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, EXCERPTS 
FROM: [Greek delta]IKTH DIKTE, for DICTEE (1982) (1992, to be 
reprinted next year by Tinfish Press, viewable now on the internet at 
<www2.hawaii.edu/~spahr/dikte/>). Lew's anthology of Asian North 
American poetry, PREMONITIONS (Kaya Production, 1995), was the first 
U.S. collection to devote considerable space to the writing of Asian 
Canadian poets, such as Roy Kiyooka, Roy Miki, and Fred Wah. His 
poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and he has published 
scholarly articles on both Asian American and Korean literatures. 
Lew's current projects include translating and writing commentary on 
the works of the Korean avant-gardist Yi Sang.

Lew has produced internationally broadcast TV news programs and 
documentaries on societal change in South Korea for several networks, 
including CBS, PBS, NHK/Japan, and British ITV. His multimedia 
'movietelling' pieces have been performed at the 1990 Los Angeles 
Festival, the Walker Art Center, Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, and 
the First Annual Chonju International Film Festival (S. Korea), among 
other venues. Lew was the founding editor of Kaya Production (now 
Kaya Press) in New York, and he has held visiting lecturerships at 
Brown, Columbia, and Cornell Universities, as well as at the 
University of Pennsylvania and UCLA. He is a recipient of fellowships 
and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, N.Y. State 
Council on the Arts, Association for Asian Studies, and Korean 
Culture and Arts Foundation.

===