May-lee Chai reads from her essay "Hungry Ghost” and ire’ne lara silva reads from her short story "song of the burning woman."


May-lee Chai is the award-winning author of 11 books of fiction, nonfiction, and translation, including her 2022 short story collection, Tomorrow in Shanghai; The New York Times Book Review said the collection, “Chai has a remarkable skill for building tension, masterfully arranging all the pieces on the board to hook the reader.” Among her books are, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, recipient of the American Book Award; and her family memoir, The Girl from Purple Mountain. Her writing has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, named a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, and recipient of an honorable mention for the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Book Awards. Her short prose has appeared widely, including in the New York Times, New England Review, Longreads, Paris Review Online, Los Angeles Times, Best Small Fictions, and cited as Notable twice in the Best American Essays anthologies. She is a Board member of the National Book Critics Circle. Mai-lee Chai who has said: “If we don’t tell our own stories, we may never see ourselves represented. Or else we may see our communities represented poorly, through the lens of stereotypes or international conflicts or some other gaze that does not do justice to our own complexity.”


ire’ne lara silva is the author of the collection of short stories, flesh to bone, that was published by Aunt Lute Press in 2013. flesh to bone received the 2013 Premio Aztlan, placed 2ND for the 2014 TEJAS NACCS FOCO Award in Fiction, and was a Finalist for ForeWard Review’s Book of the Year Award in Multicultural Fiction. flesh to bone was also selected as the May 2014 Book of the Month for the National Latino Book Club/Las Comadres. She is also the author of three chapbooks: ani’mal, INDíGENA and Enduring Azucares (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). Her two full length poetry collections, furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) and Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016) were finalists for the International Latino Book Award in Poetry. Her most recent poetry collection, CUICACALLI/House of Song (Saddle Road Press, 2019), was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Prize. In 2020, ire’ne was inducted as a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne and Dan Vera are the co-editors of IMANIMAN: Poets Writing on the Anzalduan Borderlands, an anthology of essays, poetry and hybrids of the two, published by Aunt Lute Books in 2017. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine and is working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body.